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ITALIAN LANDSCAPE | 
IN EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
ENGLAND 


A STUDY CHIEFLY OF THE INFLUENCE 
OF CLAUDE LORRAIN AND SALVATOR ROSA 
ON ENGLISH TASTE 


1700-1800 


BY 
ELIZABETH WHEELER MANWARING, Pz.D. 


ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH COMPOSITION 
IN WELLESLEY COLLEGE 


THe WELLESLEY SEMI-CENTENNIAL SERIES 


NEW YORK 
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 
AMERICAN BRANCH: 35 WEST 32ND STREET 
LONDON, TORONTO, MELBOURNE & BOMBAY 


1925 


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PREFACE 


THE idea that the eighteenth century, until the last two dec- 
ades, was generally blind to natural beauty is probably no 
longer current. But aside from several glancing hints, there has 
been no consideration of the part played by painting in develop- 
ing the love of landscape in England. Yet the landscape which 
was taken as a model by Thomson and Dyer, by Kent and 
Shenstone, by Mrs. Radcliffe, was Italian, the landscape of the 
seventeenth century painters, Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa, 
the Poussins, and the long line of their followers and imitators, 
French, Dutch, and English. 

This relation of poetry and painting in the eighteenth century 
has been noticed by several critics, but only briefly. The Greek 
poets, says Thomas Twining, in one of his dissertations on 
Aristotle’s Poetics (1789), “did not describe the scenery of 
nature in a picturesque manner, because . . . those beauties 
were not heightened to them, as they are to us, by comparison 
with painting — with those models of tmproved and selected 
nature, which it is the business of the landscape painter to 
exhibit. They had no THomsons, because they had no 
Craupes.” And he contrasts the effect of landscape on the 
peasant with its effect on the person of culture, used to pictured 
scenes: “such beauty does imitation reflect back upon the 
object imitated.” Alison in his Essays on Taste (1790) attrib- 
utes the creation of English landscape gardening to admiration of 
Italian scenery, and “the difference or inferiority of the scenery 
of our own country.” This admiration was founded, he thought, 
partly on the study of the classics, and the strong prejudice 
which “ we so early and so deeply feel, in favour of every thing 
that relates to Grecian and to Roman Antiquity ”; and very 
largely on landscape painting. “Our first impressions of the 
Beauty of Nature had been gained from the Compositions which 
delineated such scenery; and we were gradually accustomed to 
consider them as the standard of Natural Beauty.” 

Some later critics refer to, but do not examine, the relation 
of landscape painting to the view of nature in the eighteenth 

ll 


IV PREFACE 


century. In Landscape Art before Claude and Salvator (1885) 
Josiah Gilbert hints that literature has owed more to art than 
art to literature in respect to appreciation of nature; and that 
“‘ the great expression of delight in natural scenery which we find 
contemporaneously in Gray and Rousseau may . . . much of it 
have been due to the abundant landscape art then in existence.” 
Miss Myra Reynolds in The Treatment of Nature in English 
Poetry between Pope and Wordsworth (1896) briefly notices the 
influence of painting on the Picturesque School, especially in 
gardening, and refers to both Dutch and Italian influences on 
English painting, especially ‘the atmospheric effects, the wide 
landscapes, and the ruined temples of Claude.” In his chapter 
on Thomson in the Cambridge Modern History of English 
Literature, Mr. A: Hamilton Thompson observes “ the tendency 
inherent in the later seventeenth century to group details in 
broad masses of colour and striking contrasts of light and 
shadow,” and to the influence on Thomson of the painters. 
“Those who began to revolt against trimness,” says Mr. Irving 
Babbitt in Rousseau and Romanticism (1919), “turned at times 
to painting —as the very word picturesque testifies —for the 
encouragement they failed to find in literature.” ‘ The real dis- 
coverer of the picturesque, the first enthusiast for the savage as- 
pects of nature,” according to Mr. Frank Jewett Mather, in his 
History of Italian Painting (1923), was Salvator Rosa. ‘ These 
forests, cascades, evening seaports, and ruined sites were freely 
bought by the English, greatly admired, and had their part in 
producing the literary enthusiasm for wild nature in the eight- 
eenth century.” 

More emphatically than any of these, though still but briefly, 
Sir Walter Raleigh, lecturing on Romance at Princeton in 1915, 
asserted the connection of the pictorial arts with the develop- 
ment. of regard for nature. He especially noticed the part played 
by the print, besides giving due weight to the landscape gardener 
(“If the house was set in order, the garden broke out into a 
wilderness”) and to the Reverend Mr. Gilpin, as precursors 
of romanticism. 


That the seventeenth century saw a radical change in the 
emphasis on landscape in painting is a sufficiently familiar idea. 


PREFACE . 


Interest in mere landscape had been foreshadowed, it is true, by 
Titian and the Caracci, in the sixteenth century, and by Paul 
Bril and Elsheimer in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth. 
But not till about 1640 was landscape fully established in the 
lay mind as a separate and important branch of painting. By 
_ that year both Claude and Salvator were well on their way to 
being the fashion, and the fashion they remained for a hundred 
and fifty years. From 1640 on, they could not satisfy the 
commissions which poured in upon them from prelates, princes, 
and nobles, and until they died, Salvator in 1673, Claude in 
1682, their pictures were sought for, extravagantly valued, copied, 
imitated, forged. 

Two great contemporaries, Nicolas Poussin and Rubens, con- 
tributed to strengthen the taste for landscape painting; but as 
they were accounted history painters, their influence is less im- 
portant. Gaspar Dughet, called Poussin, brother-in-law of Nic- 
olas and associate of Claude, was enormously admired by the 
English, and much collected by them. His pictures show the 
training which he received from both Nicolas and Claude, and 
even at times, in his scenes of wild nature, have a suggestion of 
Salvator. Ruysdael and other Dutch and Flemish artists, though 
often admired, were generally classed below the painters of 
Italian landscape, as following nature slavishly, rather than 
selecting and improving her scenes. 

Of all landscape painters, Claude and Salvator are named 
most often by the English of taste in the eighteenth century. 
The very contrast between them helped to associate them as ex- 
amples of the two sorts of scenery which had most impressed the 
English visitor to Italy. Contrasted as they were in subjects 
and manner, they were akin in possessing literary and poetic 
appeal. The visitor least a virtuoso could discern something of 
what they were trying to say. For his better enlightenment there 
was usually some title, a Cephalus and Procris, a Repose in 
Egypt, an Annunciation, or a Job, a Diogenes, a St. Jerome. 
Title and figures, however slight their importance, helped to 
make connection with the more familiar art of history painting, 
which was easy for the novice in taste to value, because of the 
story told. But Claude and Salvator gave what even Raphael, 
so effusively admired, could not give in the same way — the 


oi PREFACE 


pleasure of recognition. On their canvases the English visitor 
saw a powerful representation of scenes already in his memory. 
What he had felt at Frascati, the Virgilian tranquillity, the 
evocation of a Golden Age, had been felt with infinitely more 
dreamy sweetness by Claude Lorrain; the awe, which he called 
horror, that had stricken the traveler as he crossed the dizzy 
crags in his journey, the sense of the might and vastness of na- 
ture and the littleness of man, the thrill of the wild and untam- 
able, Salvator Rosa had felt more passionately. 

The value which modern criticism assigns to these artists is not 
important for a study of their influence in the eighteenth century. 
What that influence was; what were the early traces of its 
appearance; what the men of that time supposed they knew 
about these artists; by what means their influence spread; 
the conceptions of landscape beauty which it established for a 
hundred years in literature, in gardening, in general taste: some- 
thing of these it is the business of this study to present. 


Forced to choose between a close study of some period or 
phase of this influence, and a view more extended in both time 
and content, I have chosen the second, from a conviction that 
any division I might impose would be but arbitrary, and that 
only a multitude of instances, ranging through the century, 
can adequately reveal the extent to which general taste was 
affected and ideals of beauty and sublimity were formed by 
the landscape painters. The result is naturally too often a tissue 
of citation. To have burdened the pages with the appropriate 
footnote references for all these would have been grotesque; I 
have kept therefore only such as cannot be supplied with the 
help of the text. For a like reason I omit the bibliography ; 
given with anything like completeness and with suitable annota- 
tion, it would have required disproportionate space. The index 
- In some measure supplies a bibliography. } 

In its original form, this study was presented to the English 
Faculty of the Graduate School of Yale University in candidacy 
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. The greater part of the 
material is derived from the Yale University Library, to the 
officials and staff of which I am grateful for many kindnesses. 
To the Harvard University Library also I am indebted for 


PREFACE Vii 


courtesies; and to the Metropolitan Museum, the Fogg Art 
Museum of Harvard University, and the Boston Museum of Fine 
Arts, especially to Miss Laura H. Dudley of the Fogg Art 
Museum and Mr. H. P. Rossiter, Keeper of the Prints in the 
Boston Museum. Besides obligations of long standing to Pro- 
fessor Albert S. Cook, I am specially indebted to him, and to 
Mrs. Cook, for help in collecting photographs. 

For being first made aware of the possibilities of the subject, 
for unwearied advice and encouragement during its preparation, 
for suggestions of material, for much practical help in the gather- 
ing of prints, and in details of publication, and, finally, for read- 
ing the greater part of the first proofs, I am deeply indebted to 
Professor Chauncey Brewster Tinker, without whose aid this 
work could scareely have been prepared. 

The honour of inclusion in the Wellesley Semi-Centennial 
Series, I gratefully acknowledge. The advice and friendly in- 
terest of Professor Katharine Lee Bates and Professor Josephine 
Batchelder of the Semi-Centennial Committee have been very 
valuable to me. 

E. W. M. 


WELLESLEY, February 23, 1925. 


—& 





CONTENTS 


CHAPTER PAGE 
I. ENGuIsH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE AT THE OPENING OF 
pe RiCtTEeNTH CENTURY . . 2. 0 a sk ehel ® 3 
II. Tur REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS IN EIGHTEENTH 
PUT eCLAND . 2° 90. dhs, cobs sa ae. ewe eC TH 
III. ENGLIsH KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION OF CLAUDE AND 
SALVATOR s ° e e se e e J ee ° e e se ° J ° e e e 35 
IV. “Itart1an LicGHt ON ENGLISH WALLIS”... ..... 57 
V. ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY OF THE EIGHT- 
IIIT GR or ey Sn Side es wae OS 
VI. THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPEIN ENGLAND. . I2I1 
ieee tte, OF THE PICTURESQUE... . . 3s «+ « s 167 
VIII. THe LANpscAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE IN THE 
Move, Of THE KIGHTEENTH CENTURY ...... 201 
IX. ITALIAN LANDSCAPE AND ROMANTICISM. . .... . 227 


ive 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Temple of Apollo. By Claude Lorrain. Engraved by 


PIS nd" ky Swi yee oe eh end Frontispiece. 
Peaeciees OY solyator Rosa... . 2... es le Facing page 18 
Claude le Lorrain. From the Liber Veritatis, 1777. He 36 
Seeramc. bY oarvator Rosa. 2 +... . 1.445. = a 48 
Landscape. By John Smith. Engraved by Woollett. * FA 73 
Landscape. Soft ground etching by Chatelain. alta: ee 78 
Landscape with Ruins. By John Baptist Jackson... . “ ig 83 
Landscape. By Gabriel Perelle. .......2.2.2.. us se 86 
Landscape. Etched after Salvator Rosa by Lady Greville. ‘“ % 90 
The Morning. By Claude Lorrain. Engraved by Vivares. “ Ae 95 
A Design by William Kent for The Seasons, 1730. ee STs 
Apollo and the Seasons. By Richard Wilson. Engraved 

eenwerGHetr Wl FOUNCY.. 0660 6 Se a 8 a cE Oe Te 
SSS St rrr “ ele Baa 
Artificial Ruins, from Batty Langley, 1728. ...... 4 lig ag 
The Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe, by William Kent. ‘“ ia SIRT 
Landscape. Engraved after Paul Bril by Johannes 

IE. ke es  eeCraG 
MmeeerOltO AL AIMIWEll. . 8g S itera 
Liber Veritatis, No. 89. Engraved by Earlom. ee Seat eS? 
Design for Cattle Shed and Gothic Ruin. ....... * De tO8 
St. John Preaching in the Wilderness. By Salvator Rosa. 

IMT. a ey ay ee z eo 
The Cascade. By Gaspar Poussin. Engraved by Vivares. “ te Ret 
The Pantheon at Stourhead. Aquatint by Gilpin. 4 i east! 
Landscape. By Gaspar Poussin. Engraved by Mason... ‘“ YY 204 
Frontispiece of Columella, 1779. By C. W. Bampfield. “ I OO 
Landscape with Cave. By Salvator Rosa. Engraved by 

ERR irc os Grin gd 4 awh aki at ah eee ae ara 


* 


= 





ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


ay 





ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 
ENGLAND 


I 


ENGLISH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE AT THE 
OPENING OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


WHEN Dyer wrote in 1726, 
The quick’ning Sun a show’ry Radiance sheds, 
And lights up all the Mountains’ russet Heads, 
Gilds the fair Fleeces of the distant Flocks, 
And, glittering, plays between the broken rocks. 
Light, as the Lustre of the rising Dawn, 
Spreads the gay Carpet of yon level Lawn; ... 


and Thomson the next year, 


. . . Young Day pours in a-pace, 

And opens all the lawny Prospect wide. 

The dripping Rock, the Mountain’s misty Top 
Swell on the Eye, and brighten with the Dawn, 


it was evident that something had happened to the eyes of 
British poets since the time of Denham and even of Milton. The 
nearest intimations of seeing landscape in Cooper’s Hill — pub- 
lished in 1640, the very year which marked the beginning of 
popularity for both Claude and Salvator —are such vague ob- 
servations as 

. . . such an easie and unforc’t ascent, 


That no stupendious precipice denyes, 
Accesse, no horror turnes away our eyes. . 


While the steepe horrid roughnesse of the Wood 
Strives with the gentle calmeness of the flood... 


But his proud head the ayery Mountain hides 
Among the Clouds; his shoulders, and his sides 
A shady mantle cloaths... . 

Low at his feet a spacious plaine is plac’d, 
Betweene the mountain and the streame imbrac’t, 


3 


4 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


which clearly is not seeing in the artist’s way at all. John Scott 
of Aimwell, a fair representative of the intelligent reader in the 
middle of the eighteenth century, finds precisely this fault with 
Denham: “ The author one should expect would have painted, as 
nearly as possible, the appearance of a fine river, amidst a beauti- 
ful region of hills, woods and vallies. Instead of this, we are 
presented with a tedious enumeration of supposed qualities.” ? 
The difference between Denham and Thomson is the difference 
between a person slightly used to landscape pictures, and one well 
used to them. Denham has no sense of composing the parts of his 
scene into one group, nor does he even see the parts pictorially ; 
Thomson has the sense of composition in a marked degree. 
Milton, it may be objected, is pictorial. He does see the parts, 

in L’ Allegro, for example, as separate small scenes; but there is 
no centre, nor is there consistency of perspective in his 

Russet Lawns, and Fallows Gray, 

Where the nibbling Flocks do stray, 

Mountains on whose barren breast 

The labouring Clouds do often rest: 

Meadows trim with Daisies pide, 

Shallow Brooks and Rivers wide, 


Towers and Battlements it sees, 
Bosom’d high in tufted Trees, 


nor even in his description of Eden, much commended in the 
eighteenth century. Dyer and Thomson had read Milton with 
devotion, as their verbal reminiscences show; but they had- some- 
thing which Milton had not —the landscapes, abundantly mul- 
tiplied in painting and print, of Claude and Poussin. 

It was this new element —the picturesque — which helped 
to transform the distaste for mountains as things uncouth into 
a fearful joy at their precipices, crags, and hanging woods. To 
appreciate this change in view, we need to turn back to Dryden. 
His famous remark on mountains has been taken as typical of his 
age, though it may be doubted whether he really knew moun- 
tains. “ High objects, it is true, attract the sight; but it looks 
up with pain on craggy rocks and barren mountains, and con- 
tinues not long on any object, which is wanting in shades of green 
to entertain it.” ? 


1 Critical Essays, 1785, p. 19. 
2 Dedication to The Indian Emperor, 1667. 


ENGLISH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE 5 


Charles Cotton, on the other hand, who was at least familiar 
with Derbyshire, and also, it is manifest, with painted land- 
scapes, when he describes Chatsworth recognizes a pictorial value 
in the crags and wild rocks, — that contrast of beauty and sub- 
limity which was so frequently made in the next age. The 
palace is girded with ‘“ wild Prospects”; its garden “ rivals 
proud Italy.” 


The Groves, whose curled Brows shade ev’ry Lake 

Do ev’rywhere such waving Landskips make, 

As Painter’s baffled Art is far above, 

Who Waves and Leaves could never yet make move ... 
To view from hence the glitt’ring Pile above... 
Environ’d round with Nature’s Shames and Ills, 

Black Heath, Wild Rock, bleak Craggs, and naked Hills, 
Who is it, but must presently conclude, 

That this is Paradise, which seated stands 

In midst of Desarts, and of barren Sands? 


John Dennis, crossing the Alps in 1688, showed that he too 
appreciated the contrast of beauty and sublimity, and was ready 
to enjoy the picturesque, but lacked vocabulary: 


. .. The impending Rock that hung over us, the dreadful Depth of 
the Precipice, and the Torrent that roar’d at the Bottom, gave us such 
a view as was altogether new and amazing. On the other side of that 
Torrent, was a Mountain that Equall’d ours.... Its craggy Clifts, 
which we half discern’d thro’ the misty gloom of the Clouds that 
surrounded them, sometimes gave us a horrid Prospect. And sometimes 
its face appear’d Smooth and Beautiful, as the most even and fruitful 
Vallies. So different from themselves were the different parts of it: 
In the same place Nature was seen Severe and Wanton. In the mean 
time we walk’d upon the very brink, in a literal sense, of Destruction; 
one Stumble, and both Life and Carcass had been at once destroy’d. The 
sense of all this produc’d different motives in me, viz. a delightful 
Horrour, a terrible Joy, and at the same time that I was infinitely 
pleas’d I trembled.* 


He despairs of making his friend at home see Mount Cenis. 
If the Alps were designed by Nature “ only as a Mound to en- 
close her Garden Jtaly: Then we may well say of her, what some 
affirm of great Wits, that her careless irregular and boldest 
Strokes are most admirable.” 

3 Miscellanies in Verse and Prose, 1693, pp. 133-134. Cf. Coryat, who finds 


in Italy “The Tempe—or Paradise of the world,” but ignores the wild 
scenery. Ed. 1905, I, 238, 245, 264. 


6 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


I am delighted, ’tis true, at the prospect of Hills and Valleys, of 
flowry Meads, and murmuring Streams, yet ’tis a delight that is con- 
sistent with Reason. . . . But transporting Pleasure follow’d the sight 
of the Alpes . . . Ruins upon Ruins, in monstrous Heaps, and Heaven 
and Earth confounded. The uncouth Rocks that were above us, Rocks 
that were void of all form, but what they had received from Ruine: 
the frightfull view of the Precipices, and the foaming Waters that threw 
themselves headlong down them, made all such a Comfort [Consort?] 
for the Eye, as that sort of Music does for the Ear, in which Horrour 
can be joyn’d with Harmony. 


A man who felt thus in crossing the Alps was ready to admire 
Salvator Rosa when he reached Rome; and on his return journey, 
to take still greater pleasure from the precipices and foaming 
waters. 

Celia Fiennes, who rode about England on horseback, suitably 
attended, in the days of William and Mary,* makes artless com- 
ments which provide a fair notion of the standards of taste in 
scenery held by a person of quality in that time. Mistress 
Fiennes viewed with delight the parks and gardens along her 
way, and never failed to visit each, and to give particulars of 
its grottos, “squaires” of turf, walks of grass and gravel, 
“knotts of flowers,” trees cut in geometric forms, “ vistos,” 
terraces, and especially fountains and water-works, with their 
surprises and wetting-spots, sudden showers descending from a 
tree of copper, streams spouted from the mouths of leaden dol- 
phins, and artificial ‘“‘ melody of Nightingerlls ” made by water- 
pipes. Her favourite encomiastic adjective was neat, and though 
she was capable of enjoying a wide prospect or shady grove, 
these must be in cultivated country. She visited two of the 
spots later frequented by the pilgrims of the picturesque — 
Derbyshire and the Lakes. But she thought that steep hills 
made “ travelling tedious and ye miles long”: “ Looking up- 
ward I was as farre from the top which was all Rocks, and some- 
thing more barren, tho’ there was some trees and woods growing 
in ye Rocks and hanging over all down ye Brow of some of the 
hills.” Hills interfered with her view, except of “ ye Clouds,” and 
were so full of loose stones that it was very unsafe to ride 
down them. 

Her insistence on the discomforts which hills introduced into 


4 Through England on a Side-Saddle . . . 1888, passim. 


ENGLISH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE y 


travel — and she was a cheerful person, not given to complain- 
ing — makes us realize that improvements in roads and means 
of travel during the eighteenth century had a great deal to 
do with the increasing enjoyment of scenery. In fact, a large 
part of what has been considered hatred or fear of mountains 
was well-warranted uneasiness at discomfort and danger. When 
to such uneasiness was added the strangeness of such a spectacle 
as the Alps afforded, and the difficulty of finding anything in 
one’s experience to compare them with, the appellation of horrid 
might seem well justified, even without classic precedent. In 
truth, however, it often is used to indicate a pleasurable awe, such 
as Dennis felt. 

When, soon after the Peace of Ryswick in 1697, the grand tour 
became part of a gentleman’s preparation for life, pictures, prints, 
and drawings collected by many a tourist began to pour into 
England, and to familiarize the eyes of intending travelers with 
what they were to see in their turn. So young Walpole and 
Gray, despite the perils and discomforts of their passage into 
Italy, were able to enjoy the grandeur of the scenery, with an 
enjoyment which is distinctly reminiscent of the paintings of 
Salvator Rosa. 

For their pictures of landscape the English were not entirely 
dependent on the pictures which they brought back from Italy 
in such extraordinary quantities. Walpole mentions in his An- 
ecdotes a number of landscape painters (chiefly of foreign ex- 
traction, indeed) who were painting in England in the last 
years of the seventeenth century and the first of the eighteenth. 
The Dutch Henry Dankers, who had studied in Italy, was em- 
ployed by Charles II as a topographical artist. John Loten, 
also Dutch, painted “ glades, dark oaken groves, land-storms, 
and water-falls; and in Swisserland, where he resided too, he 
drew many views of the Alps.” ‘This artist, manifestly an imi- 
tator of Salvator or Gaspar or both, died in London about 1680, 
An English landscape painter, Thomas Manby, studied in 
Italy, brought back, as the practice was, a collection of pictures 
for sale, and died about 1690. Gerard Edema came to England 
about 1670, and took subjects of wild nature from Norway and 
Newfoundland, to which countries he made voyages; “ delight- 
ing in rocky views, falls of water, and scenes of horror.” Henry 


8 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Adrian Coloni, who died in 1701, imitated Salvator Rosa. John 
Griffier (1645-1718), ‘“‘ the Gentleman of Utrecht,’ who painted 
“views of London, Italian ruins, and prospects on the Rhine,” 
came to London soon after the great fire. He was patronized 
by the Duke of Beaufort, and other noblemen, according to Strutt, 
who says that his pictures were held in the highest estimation. 
He was an imitator of great versatility, judging from the pic- 
tures sold after his death, which ranged over some ten Dutch 
and Italian masters, including Salvator; his son John was one 
of the many copyists of Claude. Other artists of this period 
include Thomas Stevenson, whose landscapes were apparently 
scene paintings; Jacques Rousseau, a pupil of Swanevelt, the 
follower and perhaps pupil of Claude; Philip Boul, whom Ver- 
tue reported to have had “ a pocket-book almost full of sketches 
and views of Derbyshire, the Peak, Chatsworth, &c. very finely 
touched, and in imitation of Salvator Rosa, whose works this 
person studied ”; Henry Cooke, who died in 1700, said to have 
been a pupil of Salvator himself; and Henry van Straaten, who 
“resided in London about the year 1690, and afterwards. He 
got much money here, and squandered it as fast.” The pre- 
dominance of wild scenery in the subjects of these artists is 
striking. 

Besides these, and the innumerable paintings — originals and 
copies—as well as prints and drawings, which poured into 
England with returning travelers, and with speculating artists 
and dealers, the amateur artists also was highly important for 
dissemination of the painter’s point of view on scenery; and 
the amateur landscape painter had begun to flourish before 
the seventeenth century closed, and long continued to flourish 
increasingly. Mistress Anne Killigrew was one, — 

Her pencil drew whate’er her soul design’d... 
The sylvan scenes of herds and flocks, 

The fruitful plains and barren rocks, 

Of shallow brooks that flowed so clear, 

The bottom did the top appear; 

Of deeper too and ampler floods, 

Which, as in mirrors, showed the woods; 

Of lofty trees, with sacred shades, 

And perspectives of pleasant glades, 


Where nymphs of brightest form appear, 
And shaggy satyrs standing near. . 


ENGLISH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE 9 


The ruins, too, of some majestic piece, 

Boasting the power of ancient Rome or Greece, 
Whose statues, friezes, columns, broken lie, 
And, though defaced, the wonder of the eye. 


As Scott says, the landscapes here described are decidedly remin- 
iscent of Claude Lorrain. : 

Excellent evidence of increased interest in painting in general, 
and landscape painting in especial, is gained by comparing 
travelers’ accounts at the close of the seventeenth century with 
those a few years later. The earlier traveler is absorbed in the 
social and political life of the places visited, the important 
buildings and antiquities. He enjoys naively the water-works 
and wetting-spots in Italian gardens, and respectfully admires 
the terraces and statues. Richard Lassels’ /¢alian Voyage (1670, 
second edition, 1698) was evidently a popular guide-book, and 
with reason, for it gives much practical advice. He had made the 
journey to Italy five times, by as many routes, and accounted 
the passage over Mount Cenis the most desirable for speed and 
convenience. He well exemplified the usual English opinion. 
Italy he regarded as “ Nature’s Darling ... receiving such 
gracious looks from the Sun and Heaven, that if there be any 
fault in Italy, it is, that her Mother Nature hath indulg’d her 
even to wantonness.” He liked views. The suburbs of San 
Pietro, at Genoa, “ compos’d of Pallaces and Gardens, such a 
beautiful Landskip, that the whole Place seem’d to me to be the 
charming Paradise of the King of the Mountains anciently, and 
I was almost going to say, that we durst not bless ourselves, 
lest this enchanted place should have vanish’d.” ‘The view from 
the Carthusian monastery at Naples, a favourite point of de- 
scription with travelers, he considered “as fine a Prospect as 
Europe can afford, excepting that of Greenwich, thought by 
Barclay, the best Prospect in Europe.” His interest in painting 
was less than that in jewels, but interest he had, even if his 
comments are of childish simplicity. Though he refers in a 
casual contemporary manner to “the Judgment of Monsieur 
Poussin, a famous Painter,” he says nothing of landscape paint- 
ing. Nor does E. Veryard, whose Account was published in 
1701. He too was pleased with Prospects, and enjoyed the sight 
from a hill overlooking Bologna of the adjacent plain and the 


10 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


snow-crowned Alps, “seeming to hang in the Air like Clouds 
at a great distance.” But he gives more time than Lassels does 
to enumerating pictures in galleries. W. Bromley, whose Travels 
appeared in 1702, noticed the landscape painters; at Florence, 
“many Pictures of the best Masters; four battles of Bour- 
guignone, some by Salvator Rosa”; but oddly classes Salvator 
among “the most antient.”” He names Giovanni da Udine as 
“ the first Inventor of Landschapes.” ‘Though he does not refer 
to ‘“ Landschapes ” by Claude or Salvator, he mentions pictures 
by “Gasparo Poussin, a Frenchman,” and by Paul Bril. 

Addison, as a more cultivated person, has more intelligent 
remarks to make on art, though he is mostly preoccupied with 
the art of the ancients. His Letter to Lord Halifax suggests 
the landscape painters ; but Raphael’s is the only name he chooses 
to use: 


For wheresoe’er I turn my ravish’d eyes, 
Gay gilded scenes and shining prospects rise. 


The glamour which classic scenes held for the Englishman he 
well expresses, — that glamour which, captured by Claude, made 
a great part of Claude’s charm for the English. The ancients, 
says Addison, had pleasures beyond ours in reading their poets; 
for “ they liv’d as it were on Fairy Ground, and convers’d in an 
enchanted Region, where every Thing they look’d on appear’d 
Romantic, and gave a thousand pleasing Hints to their Imagina- 
tion.” ® ; 

Just once in his Remarks on Several Parts of Italy (1705), 
which seemed to the immediately succeeding generations such 
an unsatisfactory account, does he refer to the landscape 
painters, and then it is with swift return to the classics, — that 
description of ‘a beautiful Prospect that none of ’em have 
mentioned ” near Tivoli: 


It opens on one side into the Roman Campania, where the Eye loses 
it self on a smooth spacious Plain. On the other Side is a more broken 
and interrupted Scene, made up of an infinite Variety of Inequalities 
and Shadowings, that naturally arise from an agreeable Mixture of Hills, 
Groves, and Vallies. But the most enlivening Part of all is the River 
Teverone, which you see at about a quarter of a Miles distance throwing 
it self down a Precipice, and falling by several Cascades from one 


5 A Discourse on Ancient and Modern Learning, 1739, Pp. 14. 


ENGLISH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE II 


Rock to another, ’till it gains the Bottom of the Valley, where the 
Sight of it would be quite lost, did not it sometimes discover it self 
thro’ the Breakings and Interstices of the Woods that grow about it. 
The Roman Painters often work upon this Landskip, and I am apt to 
believe that Horace had his Eye upon it in those Two or Three beauti- 
ful Touches that he has given us of these Seats. 


His pleasure in prospects was more exquisite and frequent 
than that of preceding travelers; but not expressed with fulness, 
it is to be noted, till after he had been at Rome, where the largest 
collections of landscape paintings were to be found. It is hard 
to understand why Addison should be cited as an example of 
the dislike of mountains supposedly prevalent in the Augustan 
Age, except that he remarks, not unnaturally, on the discom- 
forts of traveling over them. As parts of a landscape he had a 
high regard for them, — especially after he had been in Rome. 
Thus he found the fatigue of crossing the Apennines “very 
agreeably reliev’d by the Variety of Scenes we pass’d thro. For 
not to mention the rude Prospects of so many rocks rising one 
above another, . . . we saw, in Six Days Travelling, the several 
Seasons of the Year in their Beauty and Perfection.” He paints 
a Claudian landscape, with amphitheatre form, from the Capu- 
cins’ garden at Albano: 


It takes in the whole Campania, and terminates in a full View of the 
Mediterranean. You have a Sight at the same time of the Alban Lake, 
that lyes just by, . . . and by reason of the continu’d Circuit of high 
Mountains that encompass it, looks like the Area of some vast Amphi- 
theatre. This, together with the several Green Hills and naked Rocks, 
that lye within the Neighbourhood, makes the most agreeable Confusion 
imaginable. 


The Alps about Geneva “ make an Horizon that has something 
in it very singular and agreeable.”” He enjoys the contrast of the 
hills “ cover’d with Vineyards and Pasturage ” on one side, with 
the “huge Precipices of naked Rocks rising up in a Thousand 
odd Figures ” on the other, ‘“ cleft in some Places, so as to dis- 
cover high Mountains of Snow that lye several leagues behind 
"em. Towards the South the Hills rise more insensibly, and leave 
the Eye a vast uninterrupted Prospect for many Miles.” In 
another “‘ Prospect ” near Geneva the Alps “ are broken into 
so many Steeps and Precipices, that they fill the Mind with an 


‘t2 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


agreeable kind. of Horror, and form one of the most irregular 
misshapen Scenes in the World.” 

The few letters that we have from Bishop Berkeley, describ- 
ing his impressions of Italy in 1714, show appreciation of 
scenery. We cannot blame him for being more preoccupied with 
his safety, crossing the Alps in January, than with sublimities; 
he thought himself lucky to have come off with but four falls, 
and the breaking of sword, watch, and snuff-box. But writing 
to Pope later, he seems to feel that something was gained even 
from these perils, and thinks it may 


. . . be worth a poet’s while to travel, in order to store his mind with 
strong images of nature. Green fields and groves, flowery meadows and 
purling streams, are no where in such perfection as in England; but 
if you would know lightsome days, warm suns, and blue skies, you 
must come to Italy; and to enable a man to describe rocks and preci- 
pices, it is absolutely necessary that he pass the Alps. 


He went out of the regular tourist’s track to visit Imarime, 
and had a full sense of its 


. wonderful variety of hills, vales, ragged rocks, fruitful plains, and 
barren mountains, all thrown together in a most romantic confusion. .. . 
Several fountains and rivulets add to the beauty of this landscape, 
which is likewise set off by the variety of some barren spots and naked 
rocks. But that which crowns the scene is a large mountain, rising out 
of the middle of the island... from which you have the finest 
prospect in the world, surveying at one view, besides several pleasant 
islands lying at your feet, a tract of Italy about three hundred miles . 
in length . . . the greater part of which hath been sung by Homer and 
Virgil... . The islands ...the bay of Naples, the promontory 

. and the whole Campagna Felice, make but a part of this noble 
landscape, which would demand an imagination as warm, and numbers 
as flowing, as your own, to describe it. 


Berkeley developed something like a painter’s eye. When 
he visited Rhode Island he was impressed by “ many delight- 
ful landscapes of rocks and promontories, and adjacent islands.” 
He was so much interested in painting, as his letters show, 
that we are surprised to find no intimation of his joining his 
wife and children in amateur practice of the art, which he com- 
mended as a source of wealth to the nation. 

What differentiates Berkeley and Addison from the later pic- 
turesque tourist is not only the rather small proportion of their 


ENGLISH INTEREST IN LANDSCAPE 13 


interest in scenery, compared with their interest in other things, 
but their apparent failure to connect agreeable scenes of nature 
with paintings of landscape. Yet their descriptions are unmis- 
takable evidence that they were influenced to find beauty in a 
particular sort of landscape — elaborate, wide-spread, greatly 
diversified, and having classical association — the landscape, that 
is, of the seventeenth century Roman landscape painters. 


II 


THE REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS IN 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


I 


AttHoucH English amateur artists and collectors of prints, 
drawings, and to some degree, paintings, were multiplying before 
the close of the seventeenth century, acquaintance, real or pre- 
tended, with the graphic arts had by no means become, as it had 
by 1750, an essential part of a gentleman’s social equipment. 
Thanks partly to the work of such engravers as Faithorne and 
Hollar, and partly to continental example, print collecting was 
fashionable to some extent following the Restoration; but the 
landscape print — Hollar’s cannot be counted as landscape in the 
later sense — was not at this time important. 

Several works on art published in England before 1700 in- 
dicate the growing interest in drawing, painting, and etching. 
The quack doctor William Salmon’s Polygraphice ran to eight 
editions from 1672 to 1701. A reason for its popularity is no 
doubt its comprehensiveness; it gave receipts for cosmetics and 
perfumes as well as instructions in all the graphic arts. The re- 
marks which it offers on landscape painting and etching are 
very brief; but the domination of Italian forms is clear, though 
there is some reference to Dutch. ‘“ Landskip is that which ex- 
presseth in lines the perfect vision of the earth, and all things 
thereupon, placed above the horizon, as towns, villages, castles, 
promontaries, mountains, rocks, valleys, ruines, rivers, woods, 
forests, chases, trees, houses and all other buildings both beauti- 
ful and ruinous.” + The instructions for the landscape painter 
certainly suggest Claude, still living at this time: “ Always ex- 
press a fair horizon . . . And if you express the Sun, let it be as 
rising or setting, and as it were behind or over some hill or moun- 
tain. ... Make your Landskip to shoot (as it were) away, one 


1 A sample “landskip ” is given, mostly buildings. (Ed. 1673.) 
14 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 15 


part lower than another ... Let every site have its proper 
parerga, adjuncts, or additional graces, as the Farm-house, Wind- 
mill, Water-mill, Woods, Flocks of Sheep, Herds of cattel, Pil- 
grims, ruines of Temples, Castles, and Monuments.” “ If you 
draw a Landskip from the life, you shall take your station from 
the rise of ground, or top of a hill, where you shall have a large 
Horizon, marking your tablet into three divisions downward.” 

The chief critical work on art (if it may be called critical) 
published in England before Richardson’s Essay on Painting was 
Dryden’s translation of Du Fresnoy’s De Arte Graphica, in 1695, 
with Graham’s “ Short Account of the most Eminent Painters ” 
appended. Hack work as it was, 


Yet still he pleas’d, for Dryden still must please. 


It was not of his own choice that he undertook the work, Dryden 
says. “Not but that I understood the Original Latine and the 
French Authour perhaps as well as most Englishmen ; But I was 
not sufficiently vers’d in the Terms of Art: And therefore thought 
that many of those persons who put this honourable task on me, 
were more able to perform it themselves.” He is vague in his 
references to painting, has not many examples at hand, mentions 
no landscape painters at all, and inclines to let his parallel be- 
come chiefly a discourse on his own art. ‘“’Tis sufficient if I 
bring a Sample of some Goods in this Voyage. It will be easie 
for others to add more when the commerce is settled.” 

The rise of a new interest is discernible in this last sentence; 
and the growing importance of the collector in another: “ Many 
of our most skillful Painters, and other Artists, were pleas’d to 
recommend this Authour to me, as one who .. . gave the best 
and most concise Instructions for Performance, and the surest to 
inform the Judgment of all who lov’d this noble Art. That they 
who before were rather fond of it, than knowingly admir’d it, 
might defend their Inclination by their Reason; that they might 
understand those Excellencies which they blindly valu’d, so as not 
to be farther impos’d on by bad Pieces, and to know when Nature 
was well imitated by the most able Masters.” Dryden laments 
that the best pieces “ are not very frequent in France or England,” 
though besides examples of many Dutch and Flemish masters, 
(“ not inconsiderable, but for Design, not equal to the Italians ’’) 


16 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


“we are not unfurnish’d with some Pieces of Raphael, Titian, 
Correggio, Michael Angelo and others.” ‘The general idea — and 
ideal — as preferable to the particular is recommended: “a 
learned Painter shou’d form to himself an Jdea of perfect Na- 
ture”; though from this precept portraits are hastily excepted. 
“That Picture and that Poem which comes nearest to the re- 
semblance of Nature is the best. But it follows not, that what 
pleases most in either kind is therefore good; but what ought to 
please ”;—— a precept important to remember as helping to ac- 
count for the admiration bestowed on the highly idealized pic- 
tures of Claude, Poussin, and their imitators. 

The popularity of Du Fresnoy’s treatise throughout the century 
is one of the innumerable curiosities of taste. There were three 
other translations; one by J. Wright in 1728, one by a painter, 
James Wills, in 1754, and one by William Mason, to which the 
notes by Reynolds give value, in 1781. The frequent repetitions 
of Ut pictura poesis which occur seem to be derived as much 
from the opening line of Du Fresnoy as from Horace’s 

Ut pictura, poesis; erit quae, si propius stes, 
Te capiat magis, et quaedam, si longius abstes; 


and the elaboration of it, 


. muta Poesis 
Dicitur haec, Pictura loquens solet illa vocari, 


was a commonplace unceasingly relished. 

Some hints of the taste of the age are given by Addison in the 
Spectator for June 5, 1711, which has the pleasant conceit of 
Time creeping about the gallery and retouching the pictures with 
his beautiful brown varnish. The admiration for dark pictures 
held from the time of Dryden’s lines to Kneller, which prophesy 
that Time’s ready pencil shall 


Mellow the Colours and imbrown the Teint, 


to the days of Constable, who rebelled when advised by Sir 
George Beaumont to adopt the colour of an old Cremona violin 
for the prevailing tone of his pictures.2 This solitary paper on 
painting, set over against the numerous papers on opera, suggests 


2 Leslie, Life of Constable, ed. 1896, p. 140. He replied by laying the 
violin down on the green turf. Beaumont himself painted with a picture of 
Gaspar Poussin’s alongside his easel, to give the correct tone. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 17 


that painting was as yet too slight an interest to evoke Addison’s 
satire, in spite of the numerous advertisements of picture-sales 
which appear on the back pages of the Spectator. 

Shaftesbury, writing to Lord Somers in 1712, observes to that 
leading connoisseur that “ though we have as yet nothing of 
our native growth in this kind worthy of being mentioned; yet 
since the Publick has of late begun to express a relish for en- 
gravings . . . and for the original paintings of the chief Italian 
schools (so contrary to the modern French), I doubt not, that in 
a very few years, we shall make an equal progress in this other 
science ” with the progress which had been made in music since 
the English displaced French by Italian models.? In his Char- 
acteristicks (1711) he refers to “ the Virtuoso-Passion, the Love 
of Painting, and the Designing Arts of every kind.” His Second 
Characters have much more to do with painting, especially the 
fragmentary Plastics. He realized the need of a critical vocabu- 
lary, and gave the rudiments of one, including such terms as 
Picturesque, Grotesque, Romantic. From this essay we learn 
explicitly that he warmly admired landscape painting, and 
owned two “ perspectives’ by Salvator, and one by Claude.* 
Though in his dying years at Naples, with means below his soar- 
ing ideals, he felt it not fitting to buy pictures for his own de- 
light, he longed to increase the collections of his friends.’ To one 
he says that since the great masters of history-painting, ‘“ the 
Carachs, the Guidos,” have become very costly, ‘“ the next 
degree of painting (which is that of nature in perspective or 
landskip) will be that which best suits you, and which, I think, 
you have most taken to of late”; a significant remark, pointing 
toward a fast-growing taste. 

Hints of Shaftesbury’s love of painting are scattered through- 
out his essays. Is not a Claude (perhaps his own) behind the 
“pompous rural scene ” in The Moralists? “ It was a Mountain 
not far from the Sea, the Brow adorn’d with antient Wood, and 
at its foot a River and well-inhabited Plain; beyond which the 
Sea appearing, clos’d the Prospect ”; and later, a sunrise scene: 
“ The Sun, now ready to rise, draws off the Curtain of Night, 


3 A Letter concerning the Art or Science of Design. In Republic of 
Letters, I, 93-106, February, 1728. 

4 Second Characters, ed. Benjamin Rand, Cambridge, 1914, pp. 139, 157. 

5 Life, etc., ed. Rand, 1900, pp. 448-449, 484-485, 516. 


18 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


and shews us the open Scene of Nature, in the Plains below.” 
Hints of Salvator occur in the sketch of wilder country, 


. where huge embody’d Rocks lie pil’d one on another, and seem to 
prop the high Arch of Heaven. — See! with what trembling Steps poor 
Mankind tread the narrow Brink of the deep Precipice! From whence 
with giddy Horrour they look down, mistrusting even the Ground which 
bears ’em; whilst they hear the hollow Sound of Torrents underneath, 
and see the Ruin of the impending Rock; with falling Trees which 
hang with their Roots upward, and seem to draw more Ruin after ’em. 


And in the “deep shades of the vast Wood,” 


. which closing thick above, spreads Darkness and eternal Night below. 
The faint and gloomy Light looks horrid as the Shade it-self. .. . 
Here Space astonishes, Sense it-self seems pregnant; whilst an unknown 
Force works on the Mind, and dubious Objects move the wakeful Sense. 
Mysterious Voices are either heard or fancy’d; and various Forms of 
Deity seem to present them-selves, and appear more manifest in these 
sylvan Scenes; such as of old gave rise to Temples, and favour’d the 
Religion of the antient World. 


The encouragement which Shaftesbury gave to the connoisseur 
— he is probably responsible for the swift popularity of the word 
Taste —was soon reinforced by that of Jonathan Richardson. 
Richardson, the most important portrait painter of the period fol- 
lowing Kneller’s death, and a notable collector of drawings and 
prints, published the first of his essays on painting and “ connois- 
sance”’ (his friend Prior suggested the word) in 1715; the second 
in 1719; the notes on works of art in Italy in 1722; and the col- 
lected Essays in 1725. ‘There were several editions of these 
last; they were published, collected, in 1792 at the Strawberry 
Hill Press. Richardson is best remembered now as the author 
whose book moved the boy Reynolds to wish to be a painter; 
but he must have influenced many others, by precept and ex- 
ample, to desire to be connoisseurs. In spite of the formal and 
pompous style ridiculed by his contemporaries—there is a 
legend that Fielding would run a furlong to escape him, and 
called him “Dr. Fidget”? ®—his ardour and devotion are im- 
pressive even today. 

6 W. H. Pyne, Wine and Walnuts, I, 108-109. According to that gossipy 
work, Richardson used to drop in at the coffee-houses to read his essays 


aloud, — at Slaughter’s, Will’s, Button’s, and Dick’s; but not at The Devil, 
which he would not enter, thinking the sign profane. 





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REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 19 


His first essay, The Theory of Painting (1715), a plea for the 
recognition of painting as a liberal art, suggests dense stupidity 
or indifference to be combated in his public. How unsympa- 
thetic an intelligent man might be we may guess from Theobald, 
who slurs works of art as “ at best but poor Bunglings and im- 
perfect Representations of Nature; but the Pride is that they 
were made by his Fellow-Creature Man. How often shall we 
see a rational Soul hung as it were by the Eyes, and fox’d with 
Admiration, upon a fine Piece of Painting?” * Judging from 
Richardson’s plea, there was even need of arguing that a painter 
was not an artisan, that his art was noble, and that a gentleman 
did not too greatly stoop in knowing a good picture from a bad 
one, or even in painting pictures himself. He seems to try to 
shock his audience into attention by extreme statements: ‘To 
be an accomplished painter, a man must possess more than one 
liberal art . . . he must also be a curious artificer, whereby he 
becomes superior to one who possesses the other talents, but 
wants that. A Rafaelle, therefore, is not only equal, but superior 
to a Virgil, or a Livy, a Thucydides or a Homer.” 

The notion of rivalry or of fraternity between the two arts 
was especially common in the eighteenth century. Ut pictura 
poesis recurs often. Both Horace —“ pictoribus atque poetis ” 
—and Du Fresnoy were partly responsible, as has been said; 
also the Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music of 
the Abbé du Bos, translated into English in 1748. Shaftesbury 
treated conventionally of the relation between the arts in his first 
Characteristicks, but by the time he was composing the Plastics 
he had come to see the absurdities of this attempt to parallel 
things unlike, and inclined to ridicule Du Fresnoy and Dryden. 
“Scarce at any time in our modern poets or authors one single 
metaphor, allusion, simile grounded on the art and formed on the 
painter’s business but what makes the painter blush . . . Com- 
parisons and parallel ran [sic] between painting and poetry... 
almost ever absurd and at best constrained, lame and defective.” 

An example of such a parallel appears in The Lay-Monastery 
(1713), Nos. 31 and 32, prefaced, of course, by the text Ut pictura 
poesis. The art of the landscape painter, by which a country 
is contracted to grace the walls of a city palace, and “ Groves 


* The Censor, 1717, 11, 51. 


20 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


spread their Branches, Rivers flow, Fountains weep, and Shep- 
herds tend their Flocks, in Rooms of State, and sometimes 
the Spectators are entertain’d with the Views of solitary Desarts,” 
is compared, as it so often is, to that of the pastoral poet. 

Walter Harte, friend of Pope and tutor (with dubious success) 
to young Stanhope, wrote as a youth in college his verse Essay 
on Painting about this time. 


Whatever yet in Poetry held true, 

If truly weigh’d, holds just in Painting too; 
Alike to profit, and delight they tend; 

The means may vary, but the same the end, 


he begins. He shows considerable interest in landscape, which 
Du Fresnoy (whose work Harte had not then read) leaves out; 
and his Italian models for it are evident: 


But most of all, the Landscape seems to please 
With calm repose, and rural images... . 

See, absent rocks hang trembling in the sky, 

See, distant mountains vanish. from the eye; 

A darker verdure stains the dusky woods; 

Floats the green shadow in the silver floods; 
Fair visionary worlds surprise the view, 

And fancy forms the golden age anew.® 


“What is Poetry but the Painting an Object to the Mind in 
natural and lively Colours?” asks another contemporary minor 
poet, the unfortunate Henry Needler. “ The nearer the Poet ap- 
proaches to the Painter, the more perfect he is; and the more 
perfect the Painter, the more he imitates the Poet,” says Hilde- 
brand Jacobs in his essay Of the Sister Arts.® 

The confusion of poetry and painting is important for better 
understanding the popularity of Claude, Salvator and the Pous- 
sins, whose landscapes were so easily related to literary concep- 
tions. This was especially true of the pastoral landscapes of 
Claude, so naturally reminiscent of Theocritus and Virgil. The 
likeness between pastoral poets and landscape artists was soon 
noticed. ‘“‘ Each of these gives you Prospects of the Country, 


8 Poems on Several Occasions, 1727, pp. 3, 25-26. 
9 Works, 1735, p. 380. Another of the various essays is by Robert Hill, 
On the Harmony between Poetry and Painting, Poems, 1775, pp. 284-288. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 21 


with Variety of Rural Scenes.” ?° ‘“ The Perfection of a Master 
Painter is, to be able to perform the same Wonders by Colours, 
which the Poet commands by Language. His ideas pass from his 
Mind into his Pencil, and rise upon the Canvass in their full 
Vigour and Proportion. His every Touch is a Creation; the 
Canvass is no longer a level, lifeless Surface, but a Scene, di- 
versify’d with Buildings, Mountains, Forests, or perhaps, a Sea 
deform’d with Tempests.” 14 ‘“‘ Poetry is said to be the sister art 
of Painting,’ says another writer, “in nothing more nearly re- 
sembling it, than Description.” 1* 

Parallels of the names of painters and poets are frequent. So 
John Nourse, in Ut Pictura Poesis, brings together Raphael and 
Homer, the Caracci and Virgil, Titian and Ovid, Veronese and 
Horace, Poussin and Theocritus: 


Lo! where Poussin his magic colours spreads, 

Rise tower’d towns, rough rocks, and flow’ry meads; 
What leagues between those azure mountains lie, 
(Whose less’ning tops invade the purple sky) 

And this old oak, that shades this hollow way, 
Amidst whose windings sheep and oxen stray, 

’Tis thus Theocritus his landskip gives, 

Tis thus the speaking picture moves and lives.1% 


“Had Theocritus and Virgil seen the landscapes of Gaspar 
Poussin, even those celebrated poets might have profited, from 
the rural and pastoral scenery of those exquisite pieces of art,” 
says John Stedman.1* Names come only too readily to the pen 
of any person of Taste, in the second half of the century. Miss 
Seward, with wonted indiscrimination, terms Mason “ the sweet 
Claude of our science.” An unknown versifier of Liverpool turns 
off with dreadful facility a list like this, worth quoting as an in- 
stance of the commonplaces of the time: 


Majestic, nervous, bold and strong, 
Let ANGELO and MILTON vie; 
Oppos’d to WALLER’S amorous song, 
His art let wanton TITIAN try; 


10 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1734, IV, -42-143. 

11 The Free-Thinker, 1718. No. 63. 

12 St. James’s Journal, April 20, 1723. 

13 Dodsley, V, 04. He doubtless means Gaspar Poussin. 
14 Taelius and Hortensius, 1782, p. 251. 


22 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Let great RoMANO’s free design, 
Contend with DrypEN’s pompous line; 
And chaste CoreccIo’s graceful air, 
With Porr’s unblemished page compare; 
LORAINE may equal THOMSON’s name, 
And HocartH’s equal BUTLER’s fame.® 


The Reverend Martin Sherlock considers Correggio the La Fon- 
taine of painting, Albano its Anacreon, Rubens its Homer, 
Raphael its Virgil.1° Mrs. Piozzi compares “ the sweetly playful 
pencil of Albano” with Waller, Domenichino with Gray, Guido 
with Rowe, “if such liberties might be permitted on the old 
notion of ut pictura poesis. But there is an idea about the world 
that one ought in delicacy to declare one’s utter incapacity of 
understanding pictures, unless immediately of the profession.” 1” 

Poetry and painting were not only compared; they mingled. 
George Smith of Chichester, a landscape artist of great vogue, 
(he prospered far beyond Wilson), published in 1770 Six Pas- 
torals. “ His profession as a lanschape'® painter,” says he in 
the Advertisement, “induced him to study nature very atten- 
tively; and the beautiful scenes he often examined, furnished 
him with a great variety of ideas many of which, he flatters him- 
self, are new; ... But as he never made the art of writing his 
particular study, he has not always been able to convey his ideas 
to the Reader with the same force as he received them from the 
Book of Nature.” His pastorals offer few descriptions of scenery, 
but are not without a pleasant homely freshness. George Keate, 
man of letters and also artist, attempted to improve on Nicolas 
Poussin by a dramatic poem entitled The Monument in Arcadia 
(1775). ‘‘ PaintING,” he says, ‘can but half tell her story. 
. . . To unveil external appearances, and to paint that precious 
Disposition of the Mind, which fixed them .. . is an elder Sis- 
ter’s Province, and the peculiar Property of the Muse.” Another 
combiner of the arts was George Cumberland. “It is delightful 


15 Mount Pleasant: a Descriptive Poem. To which is added . . . an Ode 
.. . Warrington, 1777. The ode is “on the Institution of a Society in 
Liverpool, for the encouragement of Designing, Drawing, Painting, &c.” 

16 Tectures, 1781, I, 16. 

17 Observations, 1789, I, 250. 

18 The spelling of this word remains uncertain until late. Mickle in 
his Spenserian Sir Martyn, has lawnskepe. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 23 


to behold the harmony subsisting between the Sister Arts,” ob- 
serves a reviewer of Hayley’s Epistle to Romney (1778). The 
English Prize Oration at Oxford in 1779 treated of the affinity be- 
tween painting and writing, and is worth attention because of its 
very commonplaceness in representing accepted opinions. Land- 
scape painting and pastoral poetry, the orator observes, both re- 
quire a turn of mind for the romantic and picturesque. ‘Claude 
Lorrain and Titian are in the one what Theocritus and Virgil are 
in the other; and the same grotesque wildness equally char- 
acterizes the scenes of Thomson and Salvator Rosa; both be- 
come more interesting by the introduction of human figures.” 1 

The eighteenth century liked art to be instructive. Artists 
themselves accepted the requirement, which had often as corol- 
lary the notion that the greater the idea or action portrayed, the 
greater the picture or poem. From this belief there resulted such 
dead weights of versification as The Epigoniad and Leonidas, such 
pictures as Hogarth’s Sigismunda, and those appalling acres of 
grandiosity by Barry and West. Jonathan Richardson helped 
to propagate this idea. ‘A picture,” he says, “is useful to in- 
struct and improve our mind, and to excite proper sentiments and 
reflections, as a history, a poem, a book of ethics, or divinity: 
the truth is, they mutually assist each other.” So history 
painting occupied the extreme top in the hierarchy of painting; 
portraits, as concerned with character, came next; and landscape 
took a lower station, along with fruit and flower pieces and 
“ drolls.” Perhaps the use of landscape for purely decorative 
purposes, over chimney-pieces and doors, helped to suggest the 
idea of inferior rank. ‘“‘ We PAINTERS are upon the level with 
writers, as being poets, historians, philosophers, and divines; we 
entertain, and instruct equally with them,” says Richardson. 
From such a view of art, it follows that “a history is preferable 
to a landscape, sea-piece, animals, fruit, flower, or any other still- 
life, pieces of drollery &c. the reason is, the latter kinds may 
please, and in proportion as they do they are estimable . . . but 
they cannot improve the mind, they excite no noble sentiments ; 
at least not as the other naturally does.” 

“ LANpsxkips, or Still Life, work much less upon us than 


19 New Ladies Magazine, 1786, p. 458. The many poets who played with 
painting, and Dyer, who attempted both arts, belong in later chapters. 


24 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Representations of the Postures and Positions of Living Crea- 
tures,” says Steele.*° “ The finest Landskip, tho’ drawn by Titian 
or Carrache, would not strike us so much, as the real Prospect 
of a beautiful or gloomy and dreadful Tract of Ground; such a 
Picture does not afford us the least Entertainment,” says another 
literary critic of painting; and adds that judicious painters 
heighten their landscapes with figures “ in order to give us Op- 
portunity of employing our Reflections.” 24 But there were those 
~ who took naive pleasure in imitation. So The Prompter (1735): 
“To have Nature, as it were, forc’d from itself, and transplanted 
upon a Canvass, under the Representation of some delightful 
Landscape, enrich’d with the grateful Variety of Sun-shine, 
Water, Greens, distant Views, and interspersed with Figures, 
that seem animated, and in Motion.” ” 

Greater familiarity with the best examples of landscape paint- 
ing, reinforced by the poetry of Thomson, raised landscape in es- 
teem; yet the desire for figures held on. “ Do you really think 
that a regular composition in the Landskip way should ever be 
filled with history, or any figures but such as fill a place —I 
won’t say, stop a gap — or create a little business for the eye to 
be drawn from the trees in order to return to them with more 
glee?” wrote Gainsborough. But he was exceptional. Even 
Reynolds, who admired Claude and owned some fine examples of 
his work, placed landscape on a lower level than history or por- 
trait. Teniers, Borgognone, Watteau, Claude, “had in general 
the same right, in different degree, to the name of painter, that a 
satirist, an epigrammatist, a sonneteer, a writer of pastorals, 
has to that of a poet.” “ History painting is certainly the most 
elevated species,” says William Gilpin, “a mode of epic; and 
tho the literary world abounds with admirable productions in 
the lower walks of poetry, an Epic is the wonder of an age.” 


2 


Three appellations most frequent in polite English literature of 
the eighteenth century are Virtuoso, Connoisseur, and Man of 

20 The Guardian, 1713, No. 86. 

21 London Journal, August 26, 1727. Cf. Santayana, The Sense of Beauty, 


1896, pp. 133-136. 
22 No. 49. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS ac 


Taste. ‘These titles we must examine, since the fashion which 
made them sought after was influential in diffusing Italian 
models of landscape in painting and gardening. The Virtuoso 
appeared earliest; at first in association with the Royal Society. 
Shaftesbury was a virtuoso in the arts; for him painting was 
“the true virtuoso science,’ and he noticed with reprobation the 
other sort of virtuoso, who collected anything at all, stones, 
shells, beetles, fossils, oddments of all three kingdoms. 

The term Connoisseur was established by Jonathan Richard- 
son. “I believe this is the only book extant upon the subject,” 
he says, in his Essay on the Science of Being a Connoisseur. His 
advice shows how ignorant he supposed his audience to be. 


There are certain arguments, which a connoisseur is utterly to re- 
ject. . . . That a picture or drawing has been, or is much esteemed by 
those who are believed to be good judges; or is, or was, part of a 
famous collection, cost so much, has a rich frame, or the like. Who- 
ever makes use of such arguments as these, besides that they are very 
fallacious, takes the thing upon trust, which is what a good connoisseur 
should never condescend to do. That it is old Italian, rough, smooth, 
&c. These are circumstances hardly worth mentioning, which belong to 
good and bad. 


He tried “ to persuade our nobility and gentry, to become lovers 
‘of Painting, and connoisseurs,” to the end that “ a much greater 
treasure of pictures, drawings, and antiques would be brought 
in.” 

The Observations of Edward Wright, made in the years 1720, 
1721, and 1722, but not published till 1730, bear evidence to the 
great increase of connoisseurs in that decade: 


There are a considerable Number of Paintings, that I had taken Notice 
of, and set down, which I have still omitted, for Fear of being tedious 
on that Head; Tho’ perhaps the general, and I had almost said, the 
fashionable Taste for those Things, which now prevails, and seems 
too in a Way of prevailing still more, rather than of declining amongst 
‘us, might well have justified my inserting more than I have done. We — 
may well look upon this Taste as prevailing, when we see such Addi- 
tions yearly made to the fine Collections of the Nobility. ... And of 
this the Italian Virtuosi, who make a Traffick of such Things, are very 
sensible, as they constantly find the Sweets of it, with regard to them- 
selves; and the Romans in particular, who have such a Notion of the 
English Ardour, in the Acquisition of Curiosities of every Sort, that 
they have this Expression frequent among them, Were our Amphi- 
theatre portable, the ENcLIsH would carry it off. 


26 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Wright shows the increased taste for the “ fine landskapes ” of 
Claude Lorrain, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator and others; and en- 
joys prospects with artistic pleasure. 

“No Art is more affected to be understood, than Painting, nor 
any in Reality is so little understood,” says Thomas Cooke in 
1732. “ Most People judge of it more by their Ears than their 
Eyes; for they seldom determine a Picture, or Painter, till they 
have taken the Opinion of a Person whom they take to be a 
Judge, and who perhaps gained that Character only by cunningly 
finding Faults in Pictures, when he could not find the Beautys, 
were there never so many.” ** “Nothing is more talk’d of, or 
less understood, than Painting,” says another writer of that year; 
‘adding that even painters themselves are not always the best 
judges, but “ the Gentleman Critic, tho’ ignorant of Painting as 
an Art,” is the properest judge, because of his more liberal cul- 
cure,-* 

The establishment of the Dilettanti Club in 1734 doubtless 
helped to seal connoisseurship as of the fashion, though the club 
had at first no end but social pleasure. The word Diélettants 
figures in John Breval’s Remarks on Several Parts of Europe 
(1738): “To lessen the Trouble which young Diélettanti often 
meet with Abroad in their Virtuoso Persuits, has been one of my 
principal Aims in this Undertaking,” says his preface, which en- 
larges on the stripping of Italian galleries by the English. ‘‘ How 
far should we surpass all our Neighbours in Virtuoso Treasures 
of every kind, as much as we do in Pictures (which are out of 
the question) but for our Losses in the Rebellion? ” 

Acceptance of connoisseurship as part of the apparatus for a 
man of fashion was by 1740 definite. A more general and gradu- 
ally more intelligent interest in painting and prints is reflected in 
the magazines. In place of, or at times alongside discussions of 
the art of the ancients, and vague, literary, pseudo-Platonic dis- 
courses on the text Ut pictura poesis, appear more and more ac- 
counts of the arts, brief and superficial, to be sure, but mildly 
technical. The sixties and seventies bring great increase in both 
number and definiteness of such articles. Technical terms are 
explained, rules given for judging the beauties of painting, lists 


23 The Comedian, 1732, p. 24. 
24 Gentleman’s Magazine, 1732, Il, 678-679. The idea is taken from 
Coypel. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 27 


of collections are printed, with the prices fetched at auction; and 
accounts of the schools of painting and of individual artists, 
copious extracts from Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting (1762- 
1771), Gilpin’s Essay on Prints (1768), and Pilkington’s Dic- 
tionary (1770); and notes on exhibitions by the Society of Arts 
and the Royal Academy. 

The term Connoisseur was very loosely used, as is shown by 
the title of the periodical paper published by Colman and Thorn- 
ton, and by The Connoisseur (c. 1740), “a Satire on the Modern 
View of Taste.” In fact, Connoisseur was used as synonym for 
the still vaguer Man of Taste. But however vague that latter 
epithet, and however often the mark of satire, few men of fashion 
would have liked its being withheld from them. 

The word Taste seems sometimes to be the most used English 
word in the whole vocabulary of the eighteenth century. One 
complacent critic observes that the age of George III may well 
be known as “the age of taste,” because of its great advance 
in connoisseurship and in the practice of the arts. For the 
entrance of the word taste into elegant society, Shaftesbury is cer- 
tainly in part responsible; though he uses it in the Char- 
acteristicks interchangeably with relish, and choice. The prog- 
ress of the term is analyzed by Henry Baker, son-in-law of Defoe, 
in his periodical, The Universal Spectator: 

A poem of Taste, written by a favourite Author, seemed first to 
bring it into Taste. Another Poet, fired by the Success of that Piece, 
writ one which he called The Man of Taste, and still brought the word 
more into use. When it became general, and an entire favourite Ex- 
pression in the Town, a Dramatick Author embraced the lucky Oppor- 
tunity and brought it on the Stage, and not injudiciously gave his Play 
the Name of The Man of Taste. It has now introduced so much Po- 
liteness among us, that we have scarce a grave Matron at Covent 
Garden, or a jolly Dame at Stocks-Market, but what is elegant enough 
to have a Taste for Things.?5 


Another satire of this decade refers to “ This Thing call’d 
Taste, this new-fam’d ALAMODE,” 


This Term for something that was never found, 
Which leaves our Sense and Reason lost in Sound, 

25 The Universal Spectator, by Henry Stonecastle of Northumberland, 
Esq., 1746, III, 46. (Written some twelve years before.) The references are 
to Pope’s Epistle to Burlington (1731), J. Bramston’s Man of Taste (1733), 
and James Miller’s Man of Taste (1733), 


28 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


as “ the reigning Foible of the Times.” 7° To Baker’s list should 
be added the print, The Man of Taste, by Hogarth, attacking 
Pope, and, nearly two decades later, Samuel Foote’s comedy, 
Taste (1752). 

“Taste is now the fashionable word for the fashionable world,” 
writes Chesterfield in 1738; and discourses pleasantly on those 
who sacrifice their natural taste for an imaginary one.27 “T 
hear the word Taste introduced in speaking of Pictures, of 
Gardens, of Architecture, of Dress, of Furniture, of Music, of 
Dancing,’ —so Dodsley’s Museum, in 1746. Never did a piece 
of fashionable jargon cause comment through so long a period. 
For years the essayists find their meat in it. In The World 
(1753) William Whitehead suggests that for Taste might be sub- 
stituted Whim. The Connoisseur (1755) calls Taste “ the darling 
idol of the polite world . . . the quintessence of almost all the 
arts and sciences.” The Spendthrift (1766) knows of no topic 
that has given “ more trouble to less purpose.” 

Robert Lloyd, in The Cit’s Country Box, a satire on the pre- 
tentious tradesman aping his betters, discourses thus: 


Blest age! when all men may procure 
The title of a connoisseur; 

When noble and ignoble herd 

Are govern’d by a single word; 

Though, like the royal German dames, 
It bears an hundred Christian names; 
As Genius, Fancy, Judgment, Gout, 
Whim, Caprice, Je-ne-scai-quoi, Virtu; 
Which appellations all describe 

TASTE, and the modern tasteful tribe. 


The man of taste was concerned with improvements, like Bur- 
lington, if he had an acre of land; but certainly with pictures. 
Bramston describes him: 


In curious paintings I’m exceeding nice, 

And know their several beauties by their Price. 
Auctions and sales I constantly attend, 

But chuse my pictures by a skilful Friend. 
Originals and copies much the same, 

The picture’s value is the painter’s name. 


26 The Modern Englishman (173-?). 27 Fog’s Journal, February 11. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 29 
So The Manners of the Age intimates, 


All his nice pieces, furnish’d by the hand 
Of Angelo’s, who studied in the Strand.?8 


“ He is just returned from travel,” says young Joseph Warton in 
a character-sketch, “and sets up for a great virtuoso. He 
imagines he has an excellent taste in painting, statuary, and 
medals ; and is inviting his friend to come and see a genuine Otho, 
which I assure you, was coined at Rome about two years ago.” ”° 

The popularity of landscape painting with collectors appears 
in several satires. Charles Johnston in The Reverie (1763) has 
Mr. Connoisseur tell a noble patron: ‘‘ Some of the landscapes 
came high; but they are very fine, very fine indeed.” *° The Ladies 
Miscellany (1770) shows a rich city knight, Sir Samuel Sapskull, 
and Mr. Pallet, a connoisseur-agent : 


Sir Samuel. Well, Mr. Pallet, what curious little picture have you 
got in your hand? 

Mr. Pallet. A curiosity, indeed, Sir Samuel. It is a landscape by 
Verdipratti; an original, and very scarce. There is not above three 
of them in England.... 

Sir S. And pray, sir, what is the purchase of it? 

Mr. P. An hundred guineas, Sir Samuel... . 

Sir S. Why, ’tis as black as ink. 

Mr. P. That’s a proof of its age, Sir Samuel. ’Tis a prodigious ad- 
vantage of pictures, they are mellow’d by time, Sir Samuel. 

Sir S. I don’t know what you mean by mellowed, not I, but I am 
sure I never saw trees of such a colour; you won’t tell me, I hope, that 
those are green trees? ... There’s Tom Brusher will touch up a 
picture for a quarter of the money, as bright as noonday, that will 
dazzle your eyes to look at it. I hate these black trees. 

Mr. P. Iam sorry to hear you say so, because your taste will be 
universally condemn’d. Your neighbour, Sir Solomon, gave more money 
for another, by the same hand, not half so black. A Verdipratti, Sir 
Samuel, is not to be met with every day. | 

Sir S. Ha, ha,—say you so, why then... you may leave your 
Verdopratto.... ‘Tis a little upon the gloomy order, to be sure; 
however, I’ll hang Mr. Verdopratto up in the sun, and then we shall see 
what he would be at. 


This reverence for age and darkness, along with neglect of 
native genius, is a frequent subject of ridicule. The Prater 
(1756) tells of being led by curiosity to visit the rooms of Lang- 

a8 2723. D. JI. 29 Ed. Wooll, 1806, p. 181. 30 1763, I, 171-172. 


30 6. ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


ford, most fashionable auctioneer of the mid-century. As he 
surveys with admiration a fine Claude, he is addressed by a 
wretched artist: 


If I had recourse to the dealers’s arts, made use of the Spaltum-pot, 
and gave it out that [my pictures] were executed by Signor Canvassini, 
all the Connoisseurs in town would flock about them, examine them 
attentively with their glasses, and cry out in rapture,— What striking 
attitudes! —What warm colouring! —What masses of light and shade! 
— What a rich fore-ground! — Did you ever see anything more riant! 
. . . Once, indeed, I painted a landscape for a dealer, who gave me 
two guineas for it, and sold it for fifty, by telling every body ’twas 
Poussin,*+ 


James Barry, in An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Ob- 
structions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (1774), ridi- 
cules the prevalent cant. In the English pursuit of art “ the 
celebrated names of Michael Angelo, Da Vinci, Raffael,” he 
says, ‘“‘ came to be lisped even by the children in picture knowl- 
edge, and men are zealous admirers of works they have never 
seen, who with all their enthusiasm, are likely enough to mis- 
take these objects of their predilection for any thing else, and 
any thing else for them, when they encounter them by accident.” 
The connoisseur is thus described by Francis Grose: 


The first requisite, nay, I may say the sine qua non... is money, 
. . . purchasing, at great prices, the almost invisible pictures of the 
ancient masters. The next ... is to have made the grand tour, and 
to have visited the city of Rome. ... Some little study is indeed 
necessary ... but this is a mere matter of memory—I mean names 
and terms, such as Michael Angelo, Raphael, the Carraches, Guido, 
Correggio, Titian, and Paul Veronese —the colouring of the Venetian 
school — clairo obscuro — keeping ... grand gusto... with a fort- 
night’s study of De Piles and Florent le Compte. ... The candidate 
must on all occasions remember to decry the works of English artists, 
particularly those who have never travelled; it being absolutely neces- 
sary, in order to paint the portrait of an Englishman, .. . or to repre- 
sent an English landscape, that the artist should have studied the men 

. and views of Italy.*? 


The spectacle which the ignorant and pretentious young Eng- 
lishman made of himself on his travels was painful to his 


81 Second ed., 1757, pp. 78-83. 
32 The Olio, 1792, pp. 54-57. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 31 


countrymen of finer sensibilities. In 1740 Lady Hertford com- 
plained, writing from Florence to her friend Lady Pomfret: 


Mr. Coke ... is one of the few that I have met with who ought 
to have been sent abroad. For most of our travelling youth neither 
improve themselves, nor credit their country. ... Travelling is certainly 
carried a great deal too far amongst the English. . . . Could you see 
the inundation of poor creatures from all the three kingdoms, that, 
at the regular seasons, overrun the different parts of France and Italy, 
you would, with me, lament the approaching month of July, in which 
I am destined to receive them here.** 


Such barbarians we have a glimpse of, two decades or so later, 
in an anecdote of James Boswell’s: 


If those who have no taste for the fine arts would fairly own it, perhaps 
it would be better. Mr. Damer and Captain Howe, two trueborn 
Englishmen, were in the great gallery at Florence. They submitted 
quietly to be shewn a few of the pictures. But seeing the gallery so 
immensely long, their impatience burst forth, and they tried for a 
bett who should hop first to the end of it.*# 


To offset such impressions, we recall that not only Mr. Coke, 
heir of the Earl of Leicester and later famous in England and 
America as Coke of Norfolk, but also Mr. Pitt, not to men- 
tion Mr. Gray and Mr. Walpole, and (on a different social plane) 
Mr. Dyer and Mr. Thomson, are examples of the visitor who 
carried home valuable stores of art. John Russell, a young 
painter in Rome in the same year that Lady Hertford makes 
her strictures, gives a pleasant account of young Pitt, who “ does 
not squander away his time and money, .. . but studies very 
much, and diverts himself with music and drawing; in which 
last he had made such proficiency that were he in our Academy, 
I should soon grow jealous of him.” And the next year he 
writes: 


It is no small satisfaction to me to find, that most young gentlemen, 
who come hither, shew so great a regard for the art which I study, 


33 Cf, Soame Jenyns. 
“ Just broke from school, pert, ignorant, and raw, 
Expert in Latin, more expert in taw, 
His honour posts to Italy and France, 
Measures St. Peter’s Dome, and learns to dance.” 
The Modern Fine Gentleman, Poems, 1750, I, 58. 


34 Boswelliana. 


32 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


as not only to admire and endeavour to understand it in theory, but 
even to amuse and divert themselves in the exercise and practice of it. 
On holy days and at other times, when a recess from my business will 
permit, I take every opportunity of accompanying gentlemen to see 
the palaces, &c. for as those grand doors flie open only to the rich, I 
am glad to follow them as their shadow, and to crowd in as one of their 
attendants.*° 


Even the Mr. Squanders, such as Dr. John Moore presents in 
Zeluco, buying pictures because they were praised by the 
vendors, showed some sense of duty to be performed. 

Probably there never was a time when impositions in paint- 
ing were more shamelessly practiced; because the combination 
of zeal for acquiring pictures bearing famous names never went 
more uniformly with ignorance of painting. The copyist was, 
early in the century, a regularly employed means of securing 
favourite pictures. The references to Mr. Klosterman and his 
journeymen, in~Shaftesbury’s correspondence, show this. The 
Monthly Review in 1756 makes the melancholy reflection that 
the days of good copying are past; “‘ Buckshorn was one of the 
last good copiers we have had in England.” °° If the impossibly 
numerous pictures of English ownership attributed to the greatest 
masters were not in themselves evidence of abundant copies and 
forgeries, there is testimony in plenty besides. “‘ There was 
some Years since a Painter (now dead) who had a dexterous 
Hand at making a Titian, a Guido, or an Angelo,’ says the 
Weekly Oracle in 1737, “ by roasting them in a Chimney over a 
proper fire; this Painter, for want of a Name, could scarce get 
three guineas for an original of his own; but has had almost as 
many hundred for a copy from a Man of Quality, who imagined 
himself one of the greater Connoisseurs of the Age.” In the Lon- 
don Magazine of the same year, an admirer of Sir James Thorn- 
hill and native talent denounces “ your Picture jobbings from 
abroad,” who decry English artists as hurtful to their trade “ of 
continually importing ship loads of dead Christ’s, Holy Families, 
Medusa’s, and other dismal, dark subjects neither entertaining 
nor ornamental, on which they scrawl the terrible cramp name of 
some /talian master, and fix on us poor Englishmen the character 


35 Letters from a Young Painter (Second ed.), 1750, I, 58, 75-76. 
86 XV, 285. 


REGARD FOR THE PICTORIAL ARTS 33 


of Universal Dupes.” John Northall, in Travels through Italy 
(1766), warns his countrymen against “a set of people in Rome 
distinguished by the appellation of Antiquarians, who offer them- 
selves to strangers of quality, to serve them as guides... . Too 
many of our young English noblemen have been deceived and 
imposed upon by these persons, especially if not competent 
judges in paintings and antiquities. These Antiquarians will 
make such novices believe a copy to be an original of Raphael, 
Angelo, Titian or some other great master.” Smollett too 
cautions against “a set of sharpers (some of them of our own 
country) who deal in pictures and antiques, and very often im- 
pose upon the uninformed stranger by selling him trash... . 
The English are more than any other foreigners exposed to 
this imposition. They are supposed to have more money to 
throw away. ... The moment they set foot in Italy they are 
seized with the ambition of becoming connoisseurs . . . and the 
adventurers of this country do not fail to flatter this weak- 
ness for their own advantage.” The Hon. William Ponsonby, 
in the next century, speaks of a painter at Rome “ who paints 
Claudes and Salvators for the use of the forestieri in a most 
extraordinary manner, and has taken in numbers of us.” *” 

The very experts were strangely credulous and uncertain. In 
1787 two of the chief dealers, Desenfans and Vandergucht, were 
involved in a suit over the authenticity of a Poussin, and leading 
artists were summoned to testify, — Gainsborough, West, Copley, 
Cosway. It must have been a queer exhibition; after listening 
to their testimony, one of the counsel quoted Sterne, “ Of all the 
cants in this canting world the cant of criticism is the most tor- 
menting.” Gainsborough was apparently as easily deceived as 
any gentleman amateur, as the values set on the pictures in his 
collection indicate.** 

The tricky dealer and ignorant amateur are not unknown in 
other centuries. But the eighteenth century differed from the 
present, for instance, first in the far greater proportion of ama- 
teurs to the whole literate population; second — partly for this 
reason —in the far greater importance given to pictures; and 


37 Lady Morgan’s Memoirs, II, 164. James Edward Smith, in 1786, 
tells of a landlord at Pisa offering miserable daubs cheap as choice originals 
of Salvator and others. Sketch of a Tour, 1793, 1, 273. 

38 Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, 1915, pp. 275-281, 321. 


34 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


finally, perhaps, in spite of such consummate collectors as Jacky 
Barnard, in the lack of discrimination which raised Guido Reni 
to a place only just below the highest, and admired Vernet and 
Zuccarelli almost as greatly as Claude and Gaspar Poussin. The 
importance of all this for the subject in hand is in the need for 
understanding the diffusion of art, the state of the public mind 
toward it, the exaltation of Italian landscape art as an ideal 
and model for English artists and English landscape, the literary 
manner in which landscape art was regarded, and the confusion 
of standards and weakness of taste which classed the feeble 
imitation with the great original, and partly accounts for the 
monstrosities which developed in the landscape gardening, and 
the general monotony of the conceptions of landscape beauty. 


Til 


ENGLISH KNOWLEDGE AND OPINION OF CLAUDE 
AND SALVATOR 


THE very ignorance of the English in matters of art, their 
tendency to judge of pictures by literature, or by names, as well 
as to follow artistic fashions sheeplike, helped to develop the 
taste for Italian landscape art. In the first place, that art repre- 
sented the land which has always laid a spell over the English 
spirit ; and in the second, these artists had, what the Dutch and 
Flemish had not — except those who, like the English favourites, 
Both and Swanevelt, had come under Italian influence — the 
classic tinge, the ruined fragments of that antique world which 
to the English was reverend. Moreover, the highly elaborated 
compositions pleased; a picture by Claude or by Gaspar Poussin 
had a great deal in it. Connection with literature was easy, too, 
and made more easy by the ostensible subjects of the pictures, 
which made of them not mere landscapes, but history pieces. 
The very names of Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa had poetry 
in them, an exotic quality which undoubtedly made them more 
delightful. As Hartley Coleridge exclaimed much later, “ Sal- 
vator Rosa — never was man so blest in a name! ” There was 
a legend, firmly believed by Mrs. Nollekens, who particularly 
admired Claude, that Claude, Salvator, and the Poussins all lived 
as neighbours in Rome. The general styles of Claude and 
Salvator were easily discernible; especially if their pictures hung 
side by side, one informed upon the other. The veriest dullard 
in art could soon distinguish a piece in the manner of Salvator, 
or of Claude; and though imitations and copies might to his 
untrained eye rank equal with the genuine, even the imitations 
and copies conveyed, however crudely and extravagantly, those 
things for which he most admired the genuine: that classic, re- 
mote and thrilling scenery, which removed him from the less 
exciting world he knew, or, later, interpreted the more picturesque 
parts of that world to him; and the spacious and grandiose de- 


35 


36 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


signs. For of technical knowledge he was guiltless; even if he 
was himself an artist, he was often strangely impervious to tech- 
nical excellencies of his art. Finally, the personalities of the 
two men were interesting in their different ways; like characters 
out of some romance, especially the bizarre Salvator. The eight- 
eenth century, even at its close, was still so near that oral tradi- 
tion of them was current. For instance, Sir George Beaumont, 
when a young man in Italy, met an old painter, who in his youth 
had known an old painter who used to see Claude setting forth 
of a morning, with Gaspar, their sketching materials loaded on 
mules, to go for a long day of loving labour in the Campagna.? 
And Shaftesbury, at the opening of the century, tells from 
hearsay a tale of how Salvator dashed together one of his grand 
landscapes. 


I 


Claude’s quiet life and personality appealed less than did those 
of “ savage Rosa.” The one thing which stood out was that he 
had been apprenticed to a pastry-cook, and had run away to 
become an artist, ‘“ nobly disdaining” the low employment to 
which he was originally bred, as Northcote said in his Dream, 
“ with all its advantages of competence and ease.” It was agreed 
that, though Claude could scarcely write his name when he 
went to Italy, he was well read in the rules of nature. That he 
studied “in the open fields,” as his friend Sandrart recounted, 
seems to have impressed the eighteenth century mind, and with 
reason; in fact, the impact made by both him and Salvator, the 
freshness and strength of their very different representations, 
came from just this resort to nature, and sketching directly from 
it, though their great compositions were built up in the studio. 

Of his personal quality, the ‘“schone Seele” which Goethe 
divined,? which Sandrart and Baldinucci imply — “ beneficus 


1 So Count Algarotti calls him. Saggio sopra la Pittura, Venezia, 1784, 
p. 162. 

2 Rogers’ Table Talk, ed. Dyce, 1887, pp. 190-101. 

3 “Da sehen Sie einmal einen vollkommenen Mensch . . . der schon gedacht 
und empfindet hat, und in dessen Gemiit eine Welt lag, wie man sie nicht 
irgendwo draussen antrifft.... Claude Lorrain kannte die reale Welt bis 
ins kleinste Detail auswendig, und er gebrauchte sie als Mittel, uns die Welt 
seiner schénen Seele auszdriicken.” Gesprache, Gesamtausg., Leipzig, 1909, 
IV, ror. 








CLAUDE LE LORRAIN. 


: ee J : 
} tf ee : Hm ate é 2 s> » . & : Z 
das hed Alar eae ee ff CF. Polue BOYLE Cngnaver wel heapusute LOndin : 
= ie a al : 


ee 





CLAUDE LE LORRAIN. 


Mezzotint by Josiah Boydell for the Liber Veritatis, 1777. 
(From the copy owned by Horace Walpole.) 





ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR = 37 


tamen et candidus, gaudiumque nullum qudaerebat aliud, quam 
quod e sua pronasceretur vocatione,” “fu amico di ognuno e 
desideroso di aver pace con qualsifosse ” —his friendliness to 
young artists, his reverent devotion to nature and his art, there 
seems to have been little appreciation. Northcote comes nearest 
to it in his imaginary portrait: 


It was the early hour of the morn, when the sun had not risen above 
the horizon. ... At a little distance a young shepherd played on his 
flageolet as he walked before his herd. ... The atmosphere was clear 
and perfectly calm: and now the rising sun gradually illumined the fine 
landscape, and began to discover to our view the distant country of 
immense extent.... The only object which appeared to fill this 
natural, grand, and simple scene, was a rustic who... led a poor 
little ass, which was loaded with all the implements required of a painter 
for his work. After advancing a few paces, he stood still, and with an 
air of rapture seemed to contemplate the rising sun; he next fell on his 
knees, directed his eyes toward Heaven, crossed himself, and then went 
on with eager looks. 


Hints from Baldinucci and other Italian writers as to Claude’s 
merits were adopted generally: his skill in depicting light, and 
the sun, especially at rising and setting; and also seas, rivers, 
splendid buildings, and “distances.” The charm of his trees 
was less noticed. His weakness in figures was notorious. Baldi- 
nucci gives a saying which was later misundertood: “Era solito 
dire che vendeva il paese, e le figure ne donava.”’ Claude’s prac- 
tice of having other artists paint the figures probably contributed 
to the notion, mistaken, so Constable asserted, that he could not 
draw them. Shaftesbury remarks upon the grotesque dispro- 
portion of the figures, by Giordano, in the example of Claude 
which he owned. The Critical ridicules Grainger for praising the 
figures of Claude, “ who is remarkable for his having left his 
figures tame and unfinished, that they might not conflict with 
the general effect of his landscape.” A palpably apocryphal tale 
told by William Gilpin shows how far he was from understanding 
Claude’s humility: 


I have heard, that Claude had a higher opinion of his own excellence 
in figures than in any part of his profession. Sir Peter Lely, we are 
told, wished for one of Claude’s best landscapes; but delicately hinted 
to him, that he should rather chuse it without figures. Claude felt 


4 February, 1759. III, 157. 


38 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


himself hurt at Sir Peter’s depreciating that excellence which he himself 
valued. He filled his landscape with more figures, than he commonly 
introduced; and desired Sir Peter, if he did not like it, to leave it for 
those that understood the composition of landscape better. His picture 
is at present, I am told, in the hands of Mr. Agar in London.® 


Perhaps a distortion of the same story is responsible for what 
“ Recluse ” relates in the General Magazine in 1791. After a 
list of Claude’s merits, he adds: “ His figures are without life. 
[Yet] he piqued himself more ... upon his historical than 
rural representations.” 

Claude’s rank as a landscape painter was taken for granted 
by Richardson, as, with Gaspar Poussin and Salvator, on the 
highest plane; with the proviso that mere landscape was a lower 
form of art than history. Claude was “ delicate,’ says Richard- 
son, as Salvator was “ great.” ‘ Of all the Landskip-Painters 
Claude Lorrain has the most Beautiful and Pleasing Ideas; the 
most Rural, and of our own Times.” ® The Richardsons would 
choose Claude for painting the landscape of Milton.* Graham 
repeats from his continental authorities a note on “ the Delicacy 
of his Colouring,’ but also, what a later critic would have ridi- 
culed, “his wonderful Conduct in disposing his Figures.” *® Sir 
William Freeman in 1718 refers to “ Claud Lorain,” (whom his 
note explains as “ one of the finest landscape painters that ever 
lived, and remarkable for his happy imitation of sunshine ”): 

' Ah! were that touch the living pencil mine, 
That artful nature, which Lorain, was thine 


Some glowing canvass where the noon-tide ray 
Shone forth effulgent in the blaze of day.® 


Gray’s brief characterization, in the list of painters compiled 
when he went on the grand tour with Walpole, says: “ Excelled 
in rural and pleasing scenes, with various accidents of Nature, 
as gleams of sunshine, the rising moon, etc.” Horace Walpole 
speaks of his “ tranquil sunshine,” which, in comparison with 
the sunshine of Rubens, he finds too uniform, but Claude to him 
is “ the Raphael of landscape painting.” Arthur Young, a vir- 


5 Catalogue of Drawings, 1802. 

6 Account of the Pictures in Italy (Second ed.), 1754, p. 186. 

7 Explanatory Notes and Remarks on Milton’s Paradise Lost, 1734, p. 378. 
8 De Art Graphica, 1698, p. 335. 

9 Letters on Several Occasions (New ed.), 1765, pp. 14-15. 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR = 39 


tuoso in landscape both real and painted, is.always sure to men- 
tion canvases by Claude or attributed to Claude; such attribu- 
tions he never questions, — indeed, it was not a doubting age in 
that respect; if he finds a gallery of unlabelled pictures, he does 
not attempt to assign them to their probable artists. Claude’s 
genius he pronounces “ elegant,” his general brilliancy and har- 
mony admirable. But though he never fails to write “ Fine,” or 
“Very Fine ” as comment alongside the title of a Claude, he dis- 
qualifies himself as regular connoisseur by his honesty. “I 
had rather praise what the critics call an execrable piece, than be 
guided merely by the dictates of a common fame: Many a Vernet 
may please me as well as a Claude.” This is too headstrong to 
suit the Critical Review; “this free-thinking sometimes grows 
into infidelity, and a too temerarious contempt of great masters.” 

“A temperate hand, and colours dipt in Heav’n,” are attrib- 
uted to Claude by the Della Cruscan, William Parsons; 


He watch’d the progress of the struggling dawn, 
Or mark’d at eve, how light’s departing beam 
On the broad wave display’d its golden gleam.° 


The Reverend William Gilpin, himself something of an artist 
in landscape, with very pronounced theories about it, is inclined 
to be captious. He grants Claude colour and light, but con- 
stantly finds fault with other things, as one of those critics who 
show their skill by their dissatisfaction. It was his method in 
dealing with Nature, too, as we shall see later. 


— Think how Claude 
Oft crowded scenes, which Nature’s self might own, 
With forms ill-drawn, ill-chosen, ill-arranged, 
Of man and beast, o’erloading with false taste.1 


We must remember that his unfavourable comments may be 

based on pictures not genuine or in bad condition. He never 

questions attributions. Claude’s want of “composition ” is his 

chief complaint. ‘If the most vivid effusions of light, and the 

most harmonious touches of nature can make a good landscape, 

this undoubtedly is one. But here is no country described; no 
10 A Poetical Tour, 1787, pp. 151-152. 


11 Three Essays. ... With a Poem on Landscape Beauty (Third ed.), 
1808, p. I19. 


40 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


beautiful objects; no shapes; no composition.” “ A pleasing 
country; but for want of good composition, all its beauteous 
tints, and hues of nature can scarce bring the eye to it with 
pleasure. On account of the great deficiency in composition, 
obvious in so many of the works of Claude, I have thought few 
masters are less indebted to the engraver than he. The print 
gives us the composition chiefly of the master, which is what we 
least value in Claude, but it can give us no idea of that lovely 
colouring, in which alone his works excel all others.” 12. We sus- 
pect that Gilpin had read De Piles, whose Principles of Painting, 
translated “ by a painter,” was published in London in 1745. 
De Piles seems to hold Claude in contempt for “ insipid choice 
in most of his situations,” and fear of innovation. What Gilpin 
meant by “ composition” seems to have been arrangement of 
objects, especially figures. He shows no gleam of recognizing 
those more important matters of composition in which Claude 
excels, his treatment of tones and masses, his vast noble design. 
The other two prophets of the picturesque, Uvedale Price and 

Richard Payne Knight, regard Claude with an admiration 
scarcely this side idolatry. ‘‘ We find in Nature or in Claude,” 
Price is given to saying.’* ‘“‘ Every person of observation must 
have remarked, how broad the lights and shadows are on a fine 
evening in nature, or (what is almost the same thing) in a 
picture of Claude.” The mood conveyed by the picture is to 
him the main concern. “Jl riposo di Claudio is his peculiar 
excellence.” The thesis itself of his essays on the picturesque 
shows his regard for Claude and the other landscape painters 
of the Italian school: that the landscape gardener should take 
the paintings as his model in planning and adorning grounds. 
Richard Payne Knight has much the same opinions, but goes 
farther, in finding Claude’s very blemishes merits. Claude to 
him is 

Nature’s own pupil, fav’rite child of taste! 

Whose pencil, like Lycippus’ chisel, trac’d 

Vision’s nice errors, and with feign’d neglect, 

Sunk partial form in general effect, 


and he adds this note: 


12 Cambridge, 1809, p. 65. 
13 Essays on the Picturesque, 1810 (First ed. 1794), I, 148; see also 156, 
161. 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR 41 


Claude has furnished his landscape more elaborately than any other 
artist, even among the Dutch, ever did; but by continually working from 
nature, and artfully throwing in touches of apparent ease and negligence, 
has effectually avoided every peculiarity of manner, and all that liny 
formality and smoothness, which usually results from excessive finishing. 
In particular forms he is often inaccurate, and sometimes studiously 
indistinct; but his general effects are always perfect. 


Claude was greatly admired by artists, who were often, how- 
ever, as obtuse as the general public in judging his virtues and 
faults. Sir Joshua felt, like Richardson, that landscape was a 
less noble form of painting than history; but he granted that 
perfection in an inferior style may be preferred to mediocrity 
in the highest walks of art, and so a landscape by Claude be 
preferred to a history by Luca Giordano. Claude’s practice of 
composing ideal landscapes rather than copying real ones Rey- 
nolds (who owned several Claudes) approved as against the 
Dutch literalness; for “its Truth is founded upon the same 
principle as that by which the Historical Painters acquire perfect 
form.” The artist who selects his materials and elevates his style 
“like Claude Lorrain, . . . conducts us to the tranquillity of 
Arcadian scenes and fairy-land.” Hazlitt is the authority (did 
he hear it from Northcote?) for a remark by Sir Joshua, that 
there would be another Raphael before there was another 
Claude.1* 

Gainsborough, too, though by his practice he seems to prefer 
Ruysdael or Wynants, was evidently an admirer of Italian land- 
scape. Accounts of his early landscape suggest the Italianate 
Both and Berghem, and he left a book of “ fifty-eight Italian 
Scenes of architecture and landscape,” *® though he never visited 
Italy. To Lord Hardwicke, who had evidently asked him to 
paint a particular scene in the neighbourhood of his seat, he 
wrote: “With respect to Nature in this country, he has never 
seen any place that affords a Subject equal to the poorest imi- 
tations of Gaspar or Claude.” The pretentious Barry finds that 


14 To Sir Abraham Hume Sir Joshua left “the choice of his Claudes.” 
A story is told in Whitley’s Life of Gainsborough of Sir Joshua’s selling to 
the dealer Desenfans, whose pretences he despised, a copy of Claude as a 
genuine one, and, after receiving the cheque, returning it with a sarcastic 
note. _ 

15 Whitley, p. 351. 


42 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


the treatment of clouds by his fellow-countryman Barret (who 
painted Mr. Lock’s landscape room at Norbury, of which more 
later) makes him “ discover a lack in the aerial part of my 
favourite Claude’s performances ”; and he considers that Claude’s 
deficiencies in clouds are due to his uninventive genius, “ not 
the only mark of timidity which may be discovered in that sweet 
artist.” Another compatriot of Barry’s, named unhappily Butts, 
has “a cast of genius much like Claude’s ”; he has “ a tender- 
ness, vivacity and art of nature which Claude only shares with 
him.” But Barry imputes to Butts incontestable superiority in 
figures, cattle, buildings, and herbage.'® Farington reports Hopp- 
ner as admiring a sea view in the Bridgewater collection; and 
adds, oddly, “‘ He thinks it more probable we shall see another 
Cuyp than a Claude.” 17 Sir George Beaumont was one of the 
most extravagant worshippers of both Claude and Gaspar. He 
owned a number of Claudes, and used to take one of the small 
ones— the picture now in the National Gallery, called The 
Annunciation — about with him in his coach on journeys. This 
picture the boy Constable saw when Sir George was visiting 
the dowager Lady Beaumont, and the sight of it, as he after- 
wards said, marked an epoch in his life. To the list of artists 
whose admiration for Claude is expressed, we might add Turner, 
whose imitation was so marked, and whose queer illiterate will 
directing that two of his best pictures should be given to the 
National Gallery, provided “ the said pictures or paintings shall 
be hung kept and placed that is to say Always between the two 
pictures painted by Claude the Seaport and Mill” shows his 
sense that Claude was his chief rival; also his failure to perceive 
the risk to himself. 

Constable’s devotion to Claude was the most ardent and at 
the same time intelligent. He spent valuable time in copying 


16 Peter Pindar doubtless had such critics in mind in his Lyric Odes: 
Claude’s distances are too confused — 
One floating scene, — nothing made out, — 
For which he ought to be abused 
Whose works have been so cried about. 
Lyric Odes, 1783. 
17 Diary, I, 343.— Farington gives also a conversation between himself, 
Mitford (author of the History of Greece), and Beaumont, in which Mitford 
thought that Claude’s main character was grandeur, and the other tyro 
argued that it was beauty. 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR 43 


Claude’s pictures. ‘“ The very doing it will almost bring me 
into communion with Claude himself,” he said. When he was 
visiting at Sir George Beaumont’s he wrote to his wife: “ I do 
not wonder at your being jealous of Claude. If anything could 
come between our love it is him.” The fragmentary notes which 
Leslie gives of his lectures at the Academy show much space 
devoted to his beloved artist. ‘‘ Brightness was the character- 
istic excellence of Claude . . . the calm sunshine of the heart.” 
“The most perfect landscape painter the world ever saw... 
serene beauty . . . sweetness and amenity, uniting splendour 
and repose, warmth and freshness.” 

The literary views upon Claude are better shown in the de- 
scriptions of scenery which copy his pictures, than in comments. 
These are often feeble in the extreme, and vague, like Miss 
Seward’s constantly recurring “ Claude and Salvatorial pencil.” 
She has so faint a glimmering of Claude’s real quality that she 
bursts into ardent eulogy of “the British Claude,” Glover, 
whose name was anathema to Constable. Mrs. Piozzi, like Uve- 
dale Price, associates ‘“‘ Nature and Claude.” The author of 
a Hymn to the Dryads (1776) shows typical generalities and 
superficialities : 


Thus CLAUDE united majesty and ease, 

The grand and beautiful, with matchless art. 
Warm glow his tinted skies, with Heaven’s own fire; 
Smooth stands his wide expanse, or waters fall 
Precipitately down, as Nature’s hand 

The lake had spread, or pour’d the quick cascade. 
His woods rise graceful, or they seem to wave, 
As calm the sky, or gently blows the gale. 


Hazlitt’s admiration for Claude is fervent. With Constable, 
of course, he belongs in date to the nineteenth century; but they 
both represent so fittingly the climax of the worship which 
Ruskin’s infatuated attack was before long to turn (so far as 
the literary world went) into coolness, that we cannot spare 
them. Hazlitt combats the heresy that either Wilson or Turner 
is on the same level as Claude. Claude is above and apart. 
“Truth with beauty suggests the feeling of inevitability. No 
Dutch picture ever suggested this feeling. .. . No one ever felt 
a longing, a sickness of the heart, to see a Dutch landscape 


44 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


twice; but those of Claude, after an absence of years, have 
this effect. The name of Claude has alone something in it that 
softens and harmonizes the mind. It touches a magic chord. 
Oh! matchless scenes, oh! orient skies, bright with purple and 
gold; ye opening glades and distant sunny vales, glittering 
with fleecy flocks, pour all your enchantment into my soul; 
let it reflect your chastened image, and forget all meaner 
things!” 


2. 


For a public which took painting largely as a form of litera- 
ture, Claude was not so satisfactory as Salvator Rosa. Claude’s 
personality was to them rather nebulous; Salvator’s vivid and 
stirring. It is a question whether the glamour of that romantic 
personality, the tales of his consorting with banditti and with 
revolutionaries, did not greatly help to make his reputation as 
artist with the English. Certainly, what was known or thought 
to be known of his life delightfully reinforced his pictures. He 
is the sort of person about whom stories cluster, as he steps 
out of the pages of Passeri and Baldinucci, a vigorous, impet- 
uous, bold, and arrogant presence: “ Era allora graziosa cosa il 
videre il pittore passeggiare le strade di Roma in posto di gravita, 
con uno bene addobbato servitore per accompagnatura di sua 
persona; ed esso con ispado al fianco, con guardia di sodo 
argento, e con altre si fatte boriose dimostranze, che tutt’ altro 
facevanlo parere da qual’ ch’egli eravi stato conusciuto per avan- 
tir.’1® Many are the tales which display both his wit, and his 
pride; like that of his cutting short the loquacious amateur who 
presumed to praise a painting in the master’s presence: “ Think 
what you would see there if you were Salvator Rosa! ” 

How many English visitors besides Shaftesbury, in the early 
years of the century, must have picked up such scraps of studio 
gossip as are noted in the Plastics ? — For example, Shaftesbury 
has named Nicolas Poussin as almost the only French artist 
worthy of criticism, and goes on: “ Being invited back to 
France, and caballed against fled to Rome with detestation of 
his country, which made him and Salvator Rosa (as I have been 
assured by the old virtuosos and painters there) so good friends: 


18 Baldinucci, xix, 8, 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR $45 


the latter being a malcontent Neapolitan, dissatisfied with his 
countrymen as his satires show. Both these by the way were 
honest moral men, the latter over-soured and mortal enemy of 
the priests, who had nothing to take advantage of against him, 
besides the supposed familiarity had with his woman servant, 
on which account he married her.” So late as 1770 Dr. Burney 
was able to find the artist’s great-granddaughter, and obtain 
from her the manuscript volume of music and poetry which he 
used for his History of Music; and Lady Morgan, in the next 
century, reported members of the family as living, though un- 
communicative to her. Salvator’s house was long pointed out, 
' along with those of his contemporaries and associates, Claude 
and the Poussins. Hazlitt lodged in it, but found it, to his 
disappointment, no help to the imagination. 

Though Salvator’s relations with “all the Men of Rank and 
Quality,” who “courted and admired” him, were noticed by 
Graham, Hayley found surprising the revelations of Salvator’s 
letters that he was a sociable being, and remarked that “ he 
was one of the few characters who have possessed a large portion 
of pleasant vivacity and delightful humour, with a sublime 
imagination.” They preferred to imagine him as a solitary 
figure, against a background of wilderness. So Northcote in 
his naive Dream depicts him, in armour and with sabre and 
lance, rather than pencil and palette: ‘He trod about in the 
wild scenery as if he defied the elements. I took him to be 
one of a banditti, till my conductor informed me it was no 
other than Salvator Rosa.” 

His fame as satirist and poet gave the more reason for view- 
ing his paintings as literature. How much his satires in verse 
were read, we may question. Two Italian editions were pub- 
lished in England, in 1787 and 1791. They seem not to have 
been translated, which suggests that they were not very popu- 
lar, in spite of the assertion made by a writer in the European 
for 1792, that they are in everyone’s hands.'® Hayley quotes 
from them in his note on Salvator as if they were not readily 


19 XXII, 104 (Drossiana). An instance of Salvator’s repute as satirist is 
found in a satirical. poem: The Group... painted in an Elegy on the 
Saddest Subjects, the Living, Dead, and Damned; such as Hogarth . . . In- 
scribed to John Wilkes ... and Charles Churchill. By Salvator Rosa... 
Poema est Pictura loquens. Hor. London, 1763. 


46 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


accessible. He felt, no doubt, that Salvator’s endowment by 
the sister muses (it is hard not to use Hayley’s own idiom) 
established him more surely as a kindred spirit, even though 
unrefined by Taste. Hayley’s view is representative not merely 
of himself, but of his numerous tribe: 


Untrodden paths of art SALVAToR tried, 

And daring fancy was his favourite guide. 

O’er his wild rocks, at her command, he throws 
A savage grandeur, a sublime repose... . 

His bold ideas, unrefin’d by taste, 

Express’d with vigour, tho’ conceiv’d in haste, 
Before slow judgment their defects can find, 
With awful pleasure fill the passive mind. 

Nor could one art, with various beauty fraught, 
Engross the labour of his active thought; 

His pencil pausing, with satiric fire 

He struck the chords of the congenial lyre. 


The picture-loving botanist, James Edward Smith, does not ad- 
mire the satires. He quotes the inscription on Salvator’s tomb 
and on the words ‘‘pictoribus sui temporis nulli secundum, 
poetarum omnium temporum principibus parem” comments: 
“ Surely the praise ought rather to have been reversed, and still 
his poetry would have been over-rated.” 

Poetic enthusiasm is generally imputed to him. So Mason, in 
The English Garden: 


SALVATOR! if where, far as eye can pierce, 

Rock pil’d on rock, thy Alpine heights retire, 
[Art] flung her random foliage, and disturb’d 
The deep repose of the majestic scene. 

This deed were impious. Ah, forgive the thought, 
Thou more than Painter, more than Poet! He, 
Alone thy equal, who was “ Fancy’s child.” 


The association of his name with Shakespeare’s is not infrequent, 
though not always so fervid. Price remarks, as a commonplace, 
that they are like in being self-taught. Walpole compares one 
of his monsters to Caliban. Shaftesbury thought that in treat- 
ment of the comic grotesque Salvator surpassed Shakespeare ; 
“Remember ... our Shakespeare’s Jack Falstaff; a character 
. . . But overdone and spoilt both by poet and players. The 
painter (a Salvator Rosa and tolerable good satirist in poetry) 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR 47 


would not hyperbole so; but moderate the hyperbole and strike 
the imagination far better.” 

Residence in Naples naturally heightened Shaftesbury’s admi- 
ration of Salvator, whose works seem to have been more abun- 
dant in his native city at that time than they were later on. When 
Shaftesbury commends landscapes to his friend Sir John Cropley, 
as the most desirable pieces for his collection, he thinks especially 
of Salvator: 


As I remember, you have, besides the copies of Poussin, a copy of Sal- 
vator Rosa also by Mr. Closterman, which you told me you could not 
bring to Reigate, because of its bigness. Now I could at this instance 
for little more than double what you paid for such poor prentice copying, 
procure an original piece or two of the same Salvator Rosa (a townsman 
of this very place) equal and even beyond those very fine originals 
which Mr. Closterman by help of his journeymen, took copies of, and 
sold to you. 


This is valuable testimony to the English admiration of Salvator 
in the first decade of the century. 

Salvator’s choice of subjects was generally admired. “ He 
understood his subject as a painter, and as a man,” says one 
critic. ‘“‘ His enthusiasm . .. was the child of knowledge; his 
ideas were rude and majestic, because he drew them from a ro- 
mantic source. He was faithful to what he saw; —he was 
an enthusiast to what he felt; . . . could account for, as a poet, 
what as a painter he could describe.”?° When in his Lectures 
on the English poets, Percival Stockdale wishes to praise Milton’s 
picture of Sin and Death, he says that by comparison with it 
“the expression of Salvator Rosa, and of Michael Angelo, is 
deadened ; and their colouring is eclipsed.” Such an association 
of names would not have surprised Sir Joshua Reynolds. 

To the verb dash, which, thanks to Thomson, almost inevitably 
accompanies the name of “savage Rosa,” Shaftesbury gives 
amusing warrant in a circumstantial story of the painting of one 
of those large perspectives which he owned. Having sketched 
out on a great canvas trees and rocks of stupendous proportions, 
the artist began to put in the figures: 


And being pushed on still by that vanity to make these also in great 
perfection ... he designed and painted them on a forward ground, 


20 General Magazine, 1791, pp. 543-545. 


48 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


in full size, or rather larger than naturally the perspective would allow 
at so near a distance. He had no sooner done this than he perceived 
what injury he had done at the same time to his first design, and that 
after doing all in his power to magnify his rock, and raise the majesty 
and grandeur of that form ...he had pulled it back again... 
rendered it diminutive, which in that peculiar form and shape of horrour 
and dismay would prove a sort of burlesque. . . like a little elephant. 
as But what does Salvator upon this. In an instant, ere the paint 
was well laid, he strikes out with a dash or two of his pencil, destroys 
his giants niched in his hollow cave. ... Upon yet nearer ground 
places just such another figure or two at least three sizes less, by 
which his hyperbole once again came right, the grandeur of parts in 
perspective restored, and his rock majestic, terribly impending, vast, 
enormous; as it should be, and as he first designed it. 


Such fine carelessness, if it did not raise his reputation with 
artists, made part of his charm for the public; for, as Mr. Fitz- 
william Darcy once pointed out, the mere doing things quickly 
is felt to be meritorious. An account of Salvator in the Weekly 
Miscellany makes much of this “ freedom of pencil” and fire. 
“His genius was most irregular. Without ever consulting nature 
he did all from practice. ... He was the creator of his own 
style of painting, which is like no other.” 74 

One of his best qualifications as hero, even better than his being 
a poet, or dashing, was his having been, as Northcote puts it, 
“one of a banditti.” ‘A roving disposition,’ says the Rev- 
erend Mr. Gilpin, “seems to have added a wildness to all his 
thoughts. We are told, he spent the early part of his life in 
a troop of banditti; and that the rocky and desolate scenes, 
in which he was accustomed to take refuge, furnished him with 
those romantic ideas in landskip, of which he is so exceedingly 
fond.... His Robbers ... are supposed also to have been 
taken from the life.’ To how many law-abiding and amiable 
gentlemen and ladies, like the Reverend Mr. Gilpin, who thus 
speaks, or Anna Seward, William Mason or Mrs. Montagu, 
must not the consideration that these wild scenes and personages 
which they beheld with pleasure, were taken from the life, 
have imparted an extra thrill? And for the liberty-intoxicated 
spirits at the close of the century, his supposed association with 
the rebellion of Masaniello was an even greater merit. We sus- 


21 IV, 755-761. (c. 1760) —A list is given of paintings by him still to be 
seen in Italy, and of engravings after him. 





St. JEROME. By SAtvaTorR Rosa. 


Dresden Gallery. 





ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR 49 


pect that much of Hazlitt’s affection for Salvator is due to this; 
he regrets that he cannot always admire the pictures, when he so 
loves the man. To Lady Morgan, judging by her preface, it is 
a dominant consideration in the writing of her romantic biog- 
raphy. Was it that biography, or Salvator’s own satires which 
furnished Ruskin with his tragic conception of Salvator as a sort 
of fallen angel, a dark and tortured spirit holding in himself 
“the last traces of spiritual life in the art of Europe .. . the 
last man to whom the thought of a spiritual existence presented 
itself as a conceivable reality,” his life passed “in horror, dis- 
dain and despair ”’? 

Graham’s account of Salvator’s merits as painter, prepared 
before “ sublimity ” was in vogue, yet stresses that quality in 
his art which was later so labelled. ‘‘ He was fam’d for his 
copious and florid Invention, for his solid Judgment in the 
Ordering of his Pieces, for the gentile and uncommon Manage- 
ment of his Figures, and his general Knowledge in all the parts 
of Painting: But that which gave a more particular Stamp to 
his Compositions, was his inimitable Liberty of Pencil, and 
the noble Spirit with which he animated all his Works.” ‘“ Sal- 
vator Rosa has generally chosen to represent a sort of wild 
and Savage Nature,” say the Richardsons; “his Style is Great 
and Noble.” The Expression in his Witch of Endor of “ Hor- 
ror and Witchery is in Perfection.” Gray summarizes: “ Ex- 
celled in savage uncouth places, very great and noble style; 
stories that have something of horror and cruelty.” Though 
he was esteemed popularly as history-painter, we notice that 
Buckridge, in 1754, pronounces him greater in landscape.?? 
Walpole says, “ His thoughts, his expression, his landscapes, 
his knowledge of the force of shade, and his masterly arrange- 
ment of horror and distress, have placed him in the first class 
of painters.” Sir Joshua Reynolds, while denying him this 
rank, yet honours him highly: “ He gives us a peculiar cast of 
Nature, which . . . though it has nothing of that elevation and 
dignity which belongs to the grand style, yet has that sort of 
dignity which belongs to savage and uncultivated nature; but 
what is most to be admired in him, is the perfect correspondence 
which he observed between the subjects which he chose, and 


22 Lives of the Most Eminent Modern Painters, 1754, p. 15. 


50 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


his manner of treating them. Everything is of a piece: his 
Rocks, Trees, Sky, even to his handling, have the same rude 
and wild character which animated his figures.” Jacob’s Dream, 
one of Salvator’s finest landscapes, Reynolds names as one of 
the examples of “ the poetry, as it may be called, of the art; 
and they are few indeed.” ‘The story as set forth on canvas 
has “the same power of inspiring sentiments of grandeur and 
sublimity ” as in the language of Scripture. 

Sir Robert Strange (who had some pictures by Salvator in 
the collection which he brought from Italy for sale in 1769) 
speaks of his spirited figures, and the “truth and freedom ” 
of the whole, as well as the intelligence. 


Why do Salvator’s daring strokes delight, 
While Mieris’ care and labour Tire the sight? 


Thus an anonymous versifier expresses the common distinction 
between Italian and Dutch art. He explains in a note, “ Sal- 
vator Rosa; a famous Italian painter, remarkable for the fire 
and spirit in all his compositions.” 2? Rosa was primarily “ the 
painter of force, — force Romantically charming,” 74 or such as 
~ was able “ to pierce, to rouse, to terrify the soul.” 75 


How drear the scenes that Rosa chose! 
Naught but the dark and dreary pine, 
Or rocks immense of height sublime, 
Co-aeval they with hoary Time, 

The marks of Pow’r Divine.?® 


The effect of art on the average cultivated person of the 
time is well seen in Arthur Young. To him Salvator appears 
more generally pleasing than Claude. ‘‘ A rock, with the broken 
branches of trees hanging from its clifts; (I apprehend by 
Salvator) the expression very noble, and romantic wildness 
of the scene most excellently caught.” ‘The famous picture 


of Belisarius . . . has more expression in it, than any painting 
I think I ever saw.” ‘ Prodigal son . . . Prodigious expression 
. amazingly fine.” ‘A landscape with rocks, wild as the 


23 Polite Companion, 1751, p. 100. 

24 Thomas Dermody, The Harp of Erin, 1807, Il, 237. 
25 Poetical Tour, op. cit.. p. 151. 

26 George Monck Berkeley, Poems, pp. 84-85. 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR 51 


winds, but fine.” ‘ Rocks and trees jumbled together in the 
wildness of that romantic genius, which seemed formed by 
nature to catch her sublimest hints; with a little group of 
figures dropped from a whirlwind.” The tourist Sulivan de- 
scribes Salvator as having an “enlarged and comprehensive ge- 
nius; a lively, fertile and poetic imagination . . . great freedom 
of pencil, and infinite fire in his compositions.” Price and 
Knight, more skillful admirers, are even more enthusiastic, with- 
out a jot of dispraise. Price especially admires the “ noble 
and animated wildness of Salvator’s stems and_ branches.” 
Though “ the savage grandeur of that sublime, though eccen- 
tric genius” is less lavishly praised by him than the beauty 
of Claude, his “picturesque effects’ serve constantly as ex- 
amples, to illustrate Price’s theory. “In no other master are 
seen such abrupt and rugged forms, such sudden deviations 
both in his figures and his landscapes; and the roughness and 
broken touches of his pencilling, admirably accord with the 
objects they characterize.” Knight especially praises his trees. 
“Scenery ... to be really sublime, should be, not only wild 
and broken, but rich and fertile; such as that of Salvator Rosa, 
whose ruined stems of gigantic trees proclaim at once the vigour 
of the vegetation . . . and of the tempests that have shivered 
and broken them.” He exalts Salvator’s sublimity in the Witch 
of Endor above Michelangelo’s Sistine frescoes. ‘‘ Salvator in- 
deed scarcely ever attempts grandeur of form, in the outlines 
of his figures; but he seldom misses . . . grandeur of effect in 
the general composition of his pictures. In the wildest flights 
of his wild imagination, he always exhibits just and natural 
action and expression.” 

Gilpin apparently admires Salvator more than he does Claude; 
Salvator is easier to admire for one with literary point of 
view, and such Gilpin’s was, more than the artist’s, in spite of 
his own artistic performances. Salvator’s figures, and his 
blasted trees — the most obvious elements — are especially com- 
mended; and the brown or “ sober ” tint, to which Gilpin often 
refers lovingly. “ For the use and beauty of the withered top 
and curtailed trunk, we need only appeal to the works of Sal- 
vator Rosa.” “ The chesnut in maturity ... is a noble tree, 
...- This is the tree which graces the landscapes of Salvator 


52 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Rosa. ... That it is naturally brittle . . . might be one reason 
for Salvator’s attachment to it.” ‘The chesnut of Calabria is 
consecrated by adorning the foregrounds of Salvator Rosa.” He 
criticizes unfavourably however, the expression and the realism 
of some of the histories, and becomes less enthusiastic over Sal- 
vator as time wears on. He has often judged falsely at first sight, 
he says, which implies a fault in the picture, since it should 
impress favourably at once, if good. An amusing bit of evidence 
of his waning appreciation appears in the changes made by him 
in a paragraph of his Essay on Prints. In 1768 Salvator is 
“very great” in composition, draws his “nobly expressive ” 
figures in “ exquisite taste,” groups them “ beautifully,” and 
has a manner “ wonderfully pleasing.” The later edition softens 
these peepee to: “often happy,” “ expressive,” “ good 
taste,” ‘“ well,” and “ pleasing.” ; 

Perhaps a retrenching is due to Gilpin’s discovery that 
artists did not altogether approve of Salvator. Northcote, for 
instance, follows the imaginary portrait quoted above with: 
“He raised no sensations in my mind which created any in- 
terest.”” Fuseli, who admired his landscapes, finds that in his- 
tories “his line is vulgar; his magic visions ... are, to the 
probable combinations of nature, what the paroxysms of a 
fever are to the flights of vigorous fancy.” (This from the 
painter of The Nightmare!) His banditti are “a medley made 
up of starveling models, shreds and bits of armour from his 
lumber room, brushed into notice by a daring pencil.” Barry, 
who admires him, speaks of his being “ condemned, as frantic, 
by some cold spiritless artists” who have not viewed the alpine 
scenery which he depicts. Strutt, in 1785, notes his landscapes 
as “very wonderful performances!” ‘ He had savages for 
his masters in painting, and he painted savage subjects,” says 
Constable; “Salvator Rosa is a great favourite with novel 
writers, particularly the ladies . . . but there is a meanness in 
all his compositions of history which must ever exclude him 
from its first ranks.” But he too, grants him power in land- 
scape, though not on a level with Claude or Gaspar. 

The “ ladies” to whom Constable referred probably meant 
Lady Morgan, though he may have had Mrs. Radcliffe in 
mind as well. Lady Morgan gives admirably the literary view 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR 53 


of Salvator. ‘“ The least of his landscapes were pregnant with 
moral interest, and calculated to awaken human sympathies. 
His deep and gloomy forests ...is [sic] only given as the 
shelter of the formidable bandit... . The long line of stony 
pathway cut through masses of impending rock, is but the de- 
file in which the gallant cavalier ...is overtaken by the 
pitiless outlaw — or, by the rush of storms.... The way- 
worn traveller, the benighted pilgrim, the shipwrecked mari- 
ner . . . become images that engage the heart as well as the 
eye, and give to the inanimate character of landscape a moral 
action and an historical interest.” Feeble as is Lady Morgan in 
critical acumen, she represents the public of her time, and the 
time before hers. Such feelings as hers made Salvator popular. 

Among the admirers of Salvator, and enjoyers of “ the terrible 
sublime,” Gray and Walpole are significant examples. The 
few pictures on which Gray’s notes are extant include a dis- 
proportionate number of what Gray took for Salvators. 
“ Aeneas and the Sybil, sacrificing to Pluto by torch light in 
the wood, the assistants in a fright... . Sigismunda, with the 
heart of Guiscardo before her. ... Hannibal passing the Alps; 
the mountains rolling down rocks upon his army; elephants 
tumbling down the precipices.” These paintings of ‘ Horrour 

. . and thrilling Fears ” are reflected in the one scenic pic- 
ture in The Bard: 


On a rock, whose haughty brow 
Frowns o’er old Conway’s foaming flood, 
Rob’d in the sable garb of woe, 
With haggard eyes, the Poet stood... . 


Walpole’s suggestion that only Salvator could paint “up to 
the horror” of it is not surprising. Walpole thinks of Salva- 
tor, too, as the only one to make endurable the picture of 
Theodore and Honoria ordered by his nephew; or fitly to illus- 
trate Macbeth for Alderman Boydell’s Gallery. He dims his 
tribute, to be sure, by using Salvator’s name for a compliment 
to Bentley, and to Lady Di Beauclerk for her drawings, “in 
sut water,” for The Mysterious Mother, which have “all Sal- 
vator’s boldness in landscape.” 

Smollett suggests Salvator as the artist who might have rep- 
resented poor Lismahago’s escape from the imagined fire; and 


54 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 181TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


mentally repaints an unsatisfactory Carlo Maratti: “I imagine 
Salvator Rosa would ... amidst the darkness of a tempest 
. . . have illuminated the blasphemer with the flash of light- 
ning by which he was destroyed; this would have thrown a dis- 
mal gleam of light upon his countenance, distorted by the 
horror of his situation, as well as by the effects of the fire; and 
rendered the whole scene dreadfully picturesque.” Mrs. Piozzi 
is of course thrilled by Salvator: “ A sight of the Santa Croce 
Palace, with its disgusting Job, and the man in armour so 
visibly horror-stricken, puts all painters but Salvator Rosa for 
a while out of one’s head.” The effect lasts over well into the 
nineteenth century. Shelley thought that the only things at 
Rome which sustained comparison with antiquity were Raphael, 
Guido and Salvator Rosa.?7 Hazlitt describes one picture thus: 
“Rough, grotesque, wild — Pan has struck it with his hoof — 
the trees, the rocks, the foreground, are of a piece, and the 
figures are subservient to the landscape. The same dull sky 
lowers upon the scene, and the bleak air chills the crisp surface 
of the water.” 78 


3 


Constantly the names of Claude and Salvator are linked; 
occasionally the praise of one is at the cost of the other, as 
when Gilpin takes Claude to task for failing to see the sublime. 
“Claude and Salvator received, or might have received, their 
ideas from the same archetypes. ... While one . . . admired 
the tamer beauties of Nature, the other caught fire and rose 
to the sublime.” Oftener they are presented in contrast, es- 
pecially after the appearance of Burke’s Essay, one representing 
the beautiful and rural, the other the sublime and wild. So 
Percival Stockdale finds in Spenser “ pictures drawn by the 
hand of a master endowed with contrasted talents; the mild 
and beaming skies of Claude Lorrain; and the rude and tangled 
precipices of Salvator Rosa.” But as early as 1737 Lord Chester- 


27 Letters, ed. Ingpen, II, 682. 
28 One more reference to Salvator may be given, from the Hymn to the 
Dryads, op. cit., as an example of ineptitude: 


“ Sedate SAaLvaTor, by his genius led 
To contemplate the grand and the sublime, 
View’d Nature in disorder, not in smiles. 
Calmly he sat, and view’d her when in storms”... 


ENGLISH OPINION OF CLAUDE AND SALVATOR — 55 


field, writing to Lyttelton, makes use of the contrast with a politi- 
cal application, as if it was familiar: ‘We have a prospect of 
the Claud Lorraine kind before us, while Sir Robert [Walpole]’s 
has all the horrors of Salvator Rosa. If the Prince would play 
the Rising Sun, he would gild it finely.” ”° 

Uvedale Price, one of the chief spokesmen of the Picturesque 
School, presents them thus. He loves the beauty of Claude, 
but admires Salvator as an example par excellence of the pic- 
turesque. In the Dialogue written as a reply to his friend 
Knight, who identified the beautiful and the picturesque, he 
uses Claude and Salvator to prove his point. Two connoisseurs, 
Mr. Hamilton, standing for himself, and Mr. Howard, for 
Knight, argue the question in the presence of their friend Mr. 
Seymour, appropriately named, for his eyes are opened to see 
more of the picturesque. They begin with real scenery; a gypsies’ 
hut, with Salvatorial adjuncts of gloom and ruined oak, at which 
the two connoisseurs wax ecstatic, and the unpicturesque Mr. 
Seymour is disgusted; then ‘‘an extensive view over a rich 
country,’ with Claudian distances, river, bridge, which Mr. 
Seymour enjoys in itself, and his friends enjoy because it is like 
Claude. They enter a gallery, and an excellent display of the 
average eighteenth century Englishman in a gallery follows. Mr. 
Seymour, observing with pleasure that the names of the painters 
are written on the frames, begins the round, “not stopping 
long at any of them till he came to one of Claude Lorraine.” 

He at once recognizes the likeness to the fine prospect lately 
observed. “It is seen in the same manner, between trees; and 
the river, the bridge, the distant buildings and hills are nearly 
in a similar situation. I have great pleasure in seeing the same 
soft lights, the same general glow which we admired in the real 
landscape represented with such skill, that, now the true 
splendour of the sun is no longer before us, the picture seems 
nature itself.” And he adds a comment which, we suspect, be- 
trays one strong reason for the English admiration of Claude: 
“What a picture would this be to have in one’s sitting-room! 
to have always before one such an image of fine weather, such 
a happy mixture of warmth and freshness! ” 

Soon he is placed before a Salvator, and admires it with due 


29 Hon. Mrs. Wyndham, Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century, 1924, I, 60. 


56 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


sense of contrast. ‘ There is a sublimity in this scene of rocks 
and mountains, savage and desolate as they are, that is very 
striking; and the whole, as you say, is a perfect contrast to the 
Claude; and it is really curious to look from one to the other. 
In that every thing seemed formed to delight the eye, and the 
mind of man —in this, to alarm and terrify the imagination; 
in the Claude, the inhabitants inspire us with the ideas of peace, 
security, and happiness — in this of Salvator (for now I recollect 
and feel the full force of those lines I only admired before) — 


Appears in burnish’d arms some savage band... .°° 


In that sweet scene, the recesses amidst fresh woods and streams, 
seem bowers made for repose and love; in this, they are caves 
of death, the haunts of wild beasts, — 


Or savage men, more dreadful far than they. 


What a stormy, portentous appearance in those clouds, that roll 
over the dark mountains, and threaten, further on, still greater 
desolation! while that mild evening sky, and soft tinge upon the 
distant hills, seem to promise still more charming scenes beyond 
them! ” “Why, Seymour,” observes Mr. Howard, “ you talk 
with more enthusiasm than either Hamilton or myself! ” And 
Seymour utters the great explanation of the popularity of Claude 
and Salvator. ‘Where there is so much poetry in pictures, it 
is not necessary to have a painter’s eye to enjoy them; although 
I am well persuaded that a knowledge of the art would greatly 
enhance the pleasure.” ** 

30 From Knight’s poem, The Landscape. 

31 An explanation given by Walter Friedlaender of the popularity of 
Claude among the English applies also to Salvator; the irrational and un- 


limited in picture; infinite space, in contrast to the defined boundaries of 
Nicholas Poussin, for example. Claude Lorrain, Berlin, 1921, p. 216. 


IV 
“TTALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 


—I admire 
None more admires —the painter’s magic skill, 
Who shows me that which I shall never see, 
Conveys a distant country into mine, 
And throws Italian light on English walls. 


The Task, Bk. I, ll. 421-425. 


I 


SINCE, rich as English galleries were, or came to be, in the 
work of Claude, Salvator Rosa, and Gaspar Poussin, the actual 
number of canvases was inevitably limited, and they could be 
visited by but a limited number of persons, how did a conception 
of landscape largely derived from them spread so very widely? 

English visitors to Italy, increasingly numerous as time went 
on, had much influence in extending the fashion, through what 
they themselves saw, through the paintings and prints they 
brought back, and through the books they published. A vast 
increase of travel on the continent took place between 1608, 
when Richard Lassels was almost apologetic in regard to travel, 
and 1740, when Lady Hertford found summer in Italy dreadful, 
because of the hordes of English visitors. With the increase of 
travel developed the taste for scenery and the taste for pictures, 
and for picture galleries. When John Evelyn, a virtuoso if 
ever there was one, visited Rome, his comments on pictures were 
surprisingly slight, and of landscape, then greatly in favour in 
Rome — all four of the great painters of Italian landscape were 
at the height of their reputation at the time of his visit — he 
had nothing to say except one reference to “ an ample landscape ” 
by Paul Bril. In 1689 he commends to Pepys prints of “ Ruines, 
Landskips, if from real subjects, not fancies, which are innumer- 
able & not necessary.” For Lassels, the picture gallery is a 
minor interest. Jewels, water-works, mechanical toys, and, above 
all, antiquities, especially buildings, were more important to 


57 


58 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


him, and to the average traveller of his day. Addison was most 
interested in antiquities. William Bromley, in Italy at the 
same time, was interested in contemporary art, but mentioned 
landscapes only briefly, nor did he know how to talk about 
pictures, or even to use adjectives, — later how easy! 

Shaftesbury is the first in whom I have discovered anything 
like a modern taste in painting. To him, in his last years at 
Naples, painting was a leading interest; and in his earlier visit 
to Italy, from 1686 to 1689, he clearly, as his son says, “ ac- 
quired a great knowledge of the polite arts.” His most famous 
piece of writing on the subject has nothing to do with this dis- 
cussion; but it is worth recalling that his Notion of the His- 
torical Draught of the Judgment of Hercules holds a place of 
some importance in the history of aesthetics. In 1709 he wrote 
a letter to “a Young Man at the University,” giving advice as 
to visiting galleries intelligently, with a view to systematic train- 
ing of taste, especially for one who aspired to be himself a painter. 
“Tf you fix your Eye on that which most strikes and pleases 
you at the first Sight; you will most certainly never come to have 
a good Eye at all.... A Fremisu, or a FrReENcH Manner 
will more prevail with you, than the true Itarian.... If 
you find no Grace or Charm at the first Looking; look on, and 
continue to observe all, that you possibly can: And when you 
have got one Glimpse ; improve it; copy it; cultivate the Jdea; 
and labour, till you have work’d your self into a right Taste.” 

Though Shaftesbury’s instructions were evidently followed 
by few, a conscientious treatment of galleries began to develop. 
By 1722 Jonathan Richardson, who had not himself visited Italy 
(““O Rome! thou happy repository of so many stupendous works 
of art, which my longing eyes have never seen, nor shall see... ’’) 
compiled from his son’s notes, An Account of the Statues, Bas- 
Reliefs, Drawings, and Pictures in Italy, France, &c. and pub- 
lished it in 1722, explaining in his preface that it is the first 
account of the works of art in Italy, though there were some 
catalogues. Before beginning to recount the landscape pictures 
in the Roman palaces, he thought a brief explanation needful ; 
which implies the still insecure position of landscape: 


Landskips are in Imitation of Rural Nature, of which therefore there 
may be as many Kinds, as there are Appearances, of This sort of 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 59 


Nature; and the Scenes may be laid in Any Country, or Age, With 
Figures, or Without; but if there are Any, as ’tis necessary there should 
be, Generally speaking, they must be Suitable, and only Subservient 
to the Landskip, to Enrich, or Animate it; Otherwise the Picture loses 
its Denomination, it becomes a History, a Battel-piece, &c. or at least 
’tis of an Equivocal kind. This sort of painting is like Pastoral in 
Poetry; and of all the Landskip-Painters Claude Lorrain has the most 
Beautiful and Pleasing Ideas; the most Rural, and of our own Times. 
Titian has a Style more noble. So has Nicolas Poussin, and the Land- 
skips of the Latter are usually Antique, as is seen by the Buildings, and 
Figures. Gaspar’s Figures are Such, otherwise he has a Mixture of 
Nicolas and Claude. Salvator Rosa has generally chosen to represent 
a sort of wild, and savage Nature; his Style is Great, and Noble; 
Rubens is pleasant, and loves to enrich his Landskip with certain 
Accidents of Nature, as Winds, a Rain-Bow, Lightning, &c. All these 
Masters are Excellent in their Several kinds, but I think Poussin has 
sometimes Err’d in the Figures he has put into his Landskips. 


About the same time that this work, which long remained a 
standard guide-book, was in preparation, Edward Wright was 
making the notes which he published in 1730 in two large 
quartos. He liked “ Landskapes,” and notes several “fine and 
large ” Claudes, though the most he has to say is, “ The setting 
sun, a most lively repose,” and frescoes by Gaspar in the Colonna 
Palace and San Martino. Salvator Rosa he refers to as one of 
the “ great Masters ” in the Altieri Palace. His work, an elab- 
orate affair with many plates, was republished in 1764. 

Lady Hertford, in 1740, is interested in the “ extremely fine 
and beautiful landscapes, by Claude Lorrain, Nicolo Poussin, 
Salvator Rosa, and others,” in the Colonna Palace; and picks 
up at the Pamphilio Palace the information that Gaspar Poussin, 
of whose work there were many examples in that collection, 
“was a menial servant in the family, and worked for eighteen 
pence a day.” She visits the tomb of Salvator, “very de- 
servedly esteemed ... for landscapes.” The collections at 
Rome, she reports, “ are quite spoiled, or are spoiling as fast as 
possible,” and she is glad to find at Bologna collections so fine 
and so widely distributed. Horace Walpole, in Rome the same 
year, tells of the dispersal of many of the finest collections, and 
the enriching of the English collections in consequence. The 
young painter, John Russell, also in Rome at this time, mentions 
visiting the galleries in the train of young gentlemen of fortune, 


60 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


and a little later, says there are sixteen British artists in Rome, 
studying painting or sculpture. 

The names of Claude and Salvator appear more frequently 
in later accounts. Smollett, in 1765, enjoys the Claude and 
the Salvator landscapes at the Colonna Palace. John Northall 
notes those in the Altieri, Barberini, Chigi, Colonna, Pamphilio 
and Palavicini Palaces, and others elsewhere. Lady Miller of 
Bath-Easton is profuse of adjectives in her Letters from Italy 
(which the magazines quote largely). She admires Salvator, it 
seems, more than she does Claude, whose trees are too trim, and 
of too fine a green; she prefers the contrast of “ withered 
branches and fantastic old rocks and trunks of trees.” But 
she grants that his pictures are highly finished, and the glowing 
warmth of his skies is inimitable. She thinks it strange that the 
Royal Gallery in Turin has no Salvator or Correggio; and finds 
among the pictures most to her taste, Salvator’s St. Anthony 
“ at handy cuffs with the Devil,” at the Pitti Palace; the martyr- 
dom of St. Stephen, and that of the Innocents, at Bologna; 
a magician making a pact with infernal spirits; and the 
Prometheus: “The vulture dragging out and feeding on his 
bowels. All the horrors attendant on such a scene are represented 
to the life.”’ Not that she does not admire Salvator’s landscapes 
at the Altieri and the Chigi Palaces, along with the fine Claudes. 
James Edward Smith, the botanist, on his tour of 1786 and 1787, 
greatly admires the landscape painters, especially Claude: ‘“ The 
more we saw of Italian landscape, the more reason we found to 
admire this excellent painter. The glowing refulgence of his 
evenings, and the clear brightness of his midday skies, which 
one is sometimes apt to think exaggerations and improvements 
on nature, are the very tints of nature herself in this delightful 
climate, and all his variations of effect are strictly and exactly 
her own.” Mariana Starke, who frankly designed as a guide-book 
her Letters from Italy, between 1792 and 1798, goes through the 
galleries with care. Exclamation points with her are like stars 
in Baedeker: “ Job on the Dunghill, by Salvator Rosa!!... 
A battle, by Salvator Rosa!!!” “A beautiful landscape by 
Claude Lorain! !!! On the other side, an almost equally beau- 
tiful one, by Poussin! ! above the cabinet a landscape, by Pous- 
sin!!! ... Two capital landscapes by Salvator Rosa!!! ” 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 61 


“Cain and Abel, by Salvator Rosa! ...a Claude!!! a 
Claude!!! ...aClaude!!!!.. .Two landscapes by Claude! ” 


2 


Some of the great collections of pictures in England had their 
beginning in the eighteenth century, a few in the late seven- 
teenth. The three great collections of the early seventeenth, 
those of Charles I, the Duke of Buckingham, and the Earl of 
Arundel, were dispersed, and many of the pictures went back to 
the Continent. Charles II, though his love for art was not 
profound, loyally bought back all of his father’s pictures that 
could be found, and in spite of the fire at Whitehall in 1697, 
the royal collection was at the end of the century again the finest 
in England. The growing interest in pictures is reflected in 
Evelyn’s Diary. In 1649 he spends a day visiting various “ vir- 
tuoso’s,” including a merchant and an artist. Among the gentle- 
men whom he names as amateurs between 1658 and 1696 are 
the Earl of Northumberland, the Duke of Norfolk, Lord New- 
port, Lord Sunderland, Lord Melford, Lord Mulgrave, and Lord 
Pembroke. He rarely mentions landscapes, and never any of 
importance. Sir Peter Lely (who owned a Claude) had the 
most distinguished private collection of that time; his methods 
of acquiring it, especially the drawings, were under suspicion. 
Daniel Defoe attributes to King William the increased interest 
in painting. He “ brought into England the Love for Paintings 
as well as for Gardens,” says Defoe in his Tour of Great Britain, 
but with doubtful accuracy; and continues: “ The love for fine 
Paintings so universally spread itself among the Nobility and 
Persons of Figure all over the Kingdom, that it is incredible 
what Collections have been made by English Gentlemen since 
that Time; and how all Europe has been rumag’d, as we may 
say, for pictures to bring over hither, where, for Twenty Years 
they brought immense Profit to such as collected them for Sale. 
But the Rates are abated since that, and we begin to be glutted 
with the Copies and Frauds of the Dutch and Flemish Painters, 
who have imposed greatly upon us.” Defoe gives the Earl of 

1 July 20, 1654, ‘“‘ Hunting landskips by Pierce,” at Wilton; July 9, 1661, 


“some incomparable paisages done in distemper,” at Sir Fr. Prujean’s; January 
24, 1685, a figure piece by Poussin, 


62 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Exeter as the most distinguished private owner. Richardson 
names the Duke of Devonshire, Lord Somers, the Earl of Pem- 
broke and Dr. Mead as the chief private collectors of his time. 

In the frenzy for improving and building which began early in 
the century to sweep through Britain, each new or newly adorned 
great house had a picture gallery showing great names — 
“ Originals and Copies much the same ” — just as it had grounds 
improved by the latest fashionable gardener, Switzer, Bridgeman, 
Kent, Brown, or Repton. There was Holkham, seat of the Earl 
of Leicester; Wilton, the Earl of Pembroke’s; Burleigh House, 
the Earl of Exeter’s; Woburn Abbey, the Duke of Bedford’s; 
Belvoir Castle, the Duke of Rutland’s; Luton House, the Mar- 
quis of Bute’s; Longford Castle, Earl Radnor’s; Panshanger, 
Earl Cowper’s; Althorp, Earl Spencer’s; Knole, the Duke of 
Dorset’s; Longleat, the Marquis of Bath’s; and above all, for 
pictures, Houghton, Sir Robert Walpole’s. And there were 
Stow, Radnor Castle, Petworth, Lowther Castle, Blaise Castle, 
Norbury Park, Temple Newsham, Stourhead, Fonthill Abbey, 
Leigh Court, Belvedere, Ditchley, Hagley, Kedleston, and many 
another. Mrs. Powys, indefatigable visitor of great houses and 
picture galleries, observes in 1760 of Lord Melcombe’s seat 
that it had few pictures, “a thing surprising, at a time when it 
seems to be the peculiar taste of the gentlemen of this age to 
make collections, whether judges of paintings or ambitious to 
be thought so.”? There were collections in London: John 
Barnard’s —the Jacky Barnard whose mark today enhances 
the value of a print or drawing; Paul Methuen’s, for a time in 
London; the Devonshire collection; Caleb Whitefoord’s ; Charles 
Jenness’ of Holborn; and many others. Generally the artists: 
were collectors ; Sir Joshua Reynolds one of the most discriminat- 
ing. Prince Frederick and his son George III were both patrons 
(less discriminating) of painting. The dealer Desenfans got 
his start by selling a Claude to the King for a thousand guineas. 
“ Since the arts have found protection and encouragement from 
the throne,” says the Fugitive Miscellany (1775), “ the taste 
for virth has become universal; persons of all ranks and degrees 
set up for connoisseurs, and even the lowest people tell familiarly 
of Hannibal Scratchi, Paul Varnish, and Raphael Angelo.” 


2 Passages from the Diary of Mrs. Philip Powys, ed, Climenson, 1899, p. 63. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 63 


In nearly all the great collections, and in many a small one, the 
pictures by Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa, and Gaspar Poussin 
were conspicuous. Waagen notes in the introduction to his 
Treasures of Art in Great Britain that owing to the English 
predilection for Claude and Gaspar, their pictures were fre- 
quently the brightest gems of the private galleries. The collec- 
tion of Jacky Barnard is typical: a landscape by Claude, one 
by Salvator and three by Gaspar. Dr. Mead owned two Claudes 
— they fetched the highest prices in his sale, in 1754; two 
Salvators — Ravens Bringing Food to Elijah, and a Landscape 
with High Rocks; three Gaspar Poussins; and landscapes by 
Elsheimer, Paul Bril, and Wootton. In Sir Luke Schaub’s col- 
lection were four Salvators, three Claudes, five Gaspars, three 
Brils, and an Elsheimer. The Duchess of Portland paid £102 
for one of the Claudes,— one of the highest prices paid at the 
sale, at which, incidentally, she spent altogether over £2000. 
The prints from British collections published by Arthur Pond 
in 1744 shed some light on the number of these landscapes owned 
in England at that time, and on their distribution. 

The English Connoisseur, “ containing an Account of whatever 
is curious in Painting, Sculpture, &c. in the Palaces and Seats 
of the Nobility and Gentry of England, both in Town and 
Country,” a small handbook in two volumes, published in 1776, 
shows the great popularity of the landscape, and the domination 
of the Italian model, though it makes only a beginning at re- 
counting the collections. Early in the nineteenth century Lady 
Morgan enumerates one hundred and eighteen pictures by Salva- 
tor Rosa in England, as against sixty-five on the continent. Her 
figures, unreliable as they are, give correctly the proportion of 
admiration. Sir Samuel Romilly, visiting Paris early in the 
nineteenth century, is amazed to find no picture by Salvator 
Rosa or by Gaspar Poussin in the Museum at that time. As 
to Claude, Smith’s Catalogue Raisonné shows one hundred and 
four of the pictures represented in the Liber Veritatis owned in 
England; this includes replicas, and presumably unauthentic 
works. Lady Dilke in her more careful survey names eighty- 
three Claudes, distributed among thirty-four collections. Some 
of these did not reach England till the close of the century, 


3 English Connoisseur, I, 4, 6, 8. 


64 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


and the scattering of the great French and Italian collections 
caused by the Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; but the 
English Connoisseur shows how many there were by 1776. 
Attendance at sales and exhibitions was fashionable. Many 
sales are advertised on the back pages of the Spectator in 1711 
and 1712. In several appear names of the Italian landscape 
painters, but often the announcement is only of “ A curious Col- 
lection of Original Paintings, lately brought from beyond Sea, 
by a Gentleman who collected them in his Travels,” or the like. 
They are sold at various places, though “ Mr. Pelitier ” finally 
seems to have established something like a regular auction room 
in “a new house near the Wheat-sheaf.” The hour for sales of 
paintings was usually ten in the morning; prints and drawings 
were sold in the evening. In 1715 Mr. James Graham announces 
in Steele’s Te Lover the establishment of his large gallery, “‘ new 
garnisht, from top to bottom, with the finest paintings Italy 
has ever produced; I dare promise myself you will find such 
Variety, and such beautiful Objects, of both History and Land- 
schape, Profane and Sacred, that it will not only be sufficient to 
please and recreate the Sight, but also to yield Satisfaction 
and Pleasure to your Mind, and instructive enough to inform 
and improve every Bodies else.” In the middle of the century 
Langford was the chief auctioneer of pictures, succeeding 
Christopher Cock in 1748. The famous Christie’s was founded 
in 1766. The author of The Female Spectator (1745) is scep- 
tical about visitors at sales: “It is true that most of our Nobility 
and Gentry profess themselves great Admirers of this Art, and 
when Notice is given of any capital Pictures to be disposed 
of by way of Auction, the Rooms .. . are sufficiently crowded; 
but ... three Parts in front of those numerous Assemblies 
are drawn thither more by the Desire of seeing one another 
than any other Motive.” Samuel Foote in The Minor (1760) 
ridicules the fashionable auctioneer; and his own entertainment, 
about 1748, was in the form of an auction of pictures. 
According to Edward Wright, collecting was established as 
“a fashionable Taste” by 1730. In 1738 John Breval con- 
soles himself that the losses of Italy are the gain of England. 
“We have not for many Years past a Traveller of Quality or 
Fortune, that has not enrich’d his Country with Connoissance 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 65 


of one sort or another... . The Farnesian Gallery is already 
stripp’d, and ’tis to be fear’d, the Medicean is Proximus Uca- 
legon.” Walpole gives a longer list of galleries that were break- 
ing up between 1740 and 1743. “Commerce... daily brings 
us something from Italy. How many valuable collections of 
pictures are there established in England on the frequent ruins 
and dispersion of the finest galleries in Rome and other cities! ” 

We have to remember that a good deal of this imported art 
was not first-rate. ‘Les Anglois enlévent tout d’Italie,” says 
Montesquieu, ‘‘ cependant les Anglois enlévent rarement du bon. 
Les Italiens s’en défont le moins qu’ils peuvent et ce sont les 
connoisseurs qui vendent a des gens qui ne le sont pas.” # 

The preference for Italian art was shown by the Houghton 
collection (which Horace Walpole thought better worth seeing 
than most of those left in Italy) as by most others; though some 
Flemish and Dutch painters were highly valued, to Walpole’s 
disgust. “As for the Dutch painters, those drudging mimicks 
of nature’s most uncomely coarsenesses, do not their earthen 
pots and brass kettles carry away prices only due to the sweet 
neatness of Albano, and to the attractive delicacy of Carlo 
Maratti?” And he exhibits the taste of his age: “It was 
not so much want of genius in the Flemish masters, as want 
of having searched for something better . . . Rottenhamer and 
Paul Bril, who travelled in Italy, contracted as pleasing a style 
as any of the Italian masters. Lord Orford’s landscapes of the 
latter are very near as fine, as pure, and as genteel, as Claude’s 
and Titian’s.” One of the most vaunted glories of the Houghton 
collection was the Prodigal Son, by Salvator Rosa. There were 
three others by Salvator, two by Claude, and five by Gaspar 
Poussin. In 1779 Lord Orford sold the collection, which had 
cost Sir Robert Walpole over £100,000, to the Empress Catherine 
for £30,000,° to Horace’s despair (though if it had not been 
sold, it would have been destroyed by the fire, soon after) ; 
but Horace owned a few pieces from it, and had also at Straw- 
berry Hill landscapes by Gaspar, and Paul Bril, and a Salvator 
which Sir Horace Mann had given to him. 

In drawings the English took extreme delight, and owned some 


4 Voyages, Bordeaux, 1894, I, 170. 
5 The Claudes were valued at £1200, the Prodigal Son at £700, 


66 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


of the finest collections in Europe, notably Richardson’s at 
one end of the century and Lawrence’s at the other. Richardson’s 
was sold in 1747, with his paintings, the sale lasting eighteen days, 
the amount received being £2760; which with all the difference in 
money values seems small beside Lawrence’s expenditure of £40,- 
ooo. Another great collector of drawings in the first half of 
the century was Arthur Pond, the engraver, whose collection 
was bought by Sir Thomas Astley. The Duke of Devonshire, 
Dr. Mead, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Benjamin West, Lord Eldon, 
Charles James Fox, the Reverend Clayton Cracherode, and 
Richard Payne Knight were among the many important collectors 
of drawings later on. Knight was especially proud of his col- 
lection of Claudes, now in the British Museum. 

A reflection of the fashion for private galleries is seen in Sz 
Charles Grandison, who possesses the tastes for improving 
grounds and collecting pictures suitable for a gentleman of the 
mid-century. He has, vaguely, some of ‘‘ the best masters of the 
Italian and Flemish schools.” Mrs. Delany’s letters, and Arthur 
Young’s travels testify to the abundant private collections, the 
ease with which a person of decent breeding might see them, 
and the importance, in the life of a polite person, of an in- 
terest in seeing them. The picturesque tourists, Gilpin, Hutchin- 
son, Shaw, Bray, visit galleries assiduously. Mrs. Powys goes 
to Longford Castle particularly to see ‘the two celebrated 
pictures of Claude Lorraine, of the rising and setting sun, amaz- 
ing fine landscapes indeed.” 

The question of originals began to exercise the mind of 
the amateur after the middle of the century, though even then 
attributions seemed to be taken generally with childlike trust. 
But Mrs. Delany reports one anxious soul: “ Mr. Floyd is a 
virtuoso and collector of pictures; he was almost in fits when 
he saw the copy of the little Coreggio I gave the Duchess, and 
asked in a trembling voice, if the original was the same size 
as the copy, and if I had omitted any particular in the back- 
ground? When I assured him, the size and every speck was as 
nearly the same as I could make them, he recovered himself, 
and said, ‘ Then mine is still an original, for it is some inches 
bigger, and has a palm tree in it.’ I never saw such symptoms 
of virtuosoship, I could hardly keep my countenance.” The quality 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 67 


of Mr. Floyd’s virtuosoship makes reasonable the announce- 
ment by Mr. William Jones at Bath in 1766 of a collection 
including Rubens, Murillo, Holbein, and Poussin; and though 
ridiculed by the press, he came back two years later with 
Rembrandt, Vandyke, and Claude.* Lord Chesterfield at the 
close of his life bought a Claude for four hundred guineas and 
a portrait of Madame de la Valliére for four. “ Well! if I am 
laughed at for giving so much for a landscape, at least it must 
be allowed that I have my woman cheap! ” said he. And the 
recounter, of course Horace Walpole, adds, “ Is it not charming 
to be so agreeable quite at the door of one’s coffin?” A few 
days later Horace calls it a landscape “ which somebody was so 
good as to paint a few months ago for Claude Lorrain.” Beck- 
ford was the stock example of the amateur who lacked discrimi- 
nation; though he did possess for a time the Altieri Claudes, 
for which he paid about £7000 and which he sold to Hart Davis 
for £12,000.” 

What the picture gallery could do for literature is best shown 
in that shining example, pointed out by Sir Sidney Colvin, of 
what happened to young Keats, whose friend Severn made him 
a frequenter of the British Museum and British Institution. If 
Claude’s Sacrifice to Apollo could be transmuted into certain 
lines of the Grecian Urn, and the Enchanted Castle evoke 


magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, 


to how many less finely strung and less qualified to express the 
emotions awakened by the pictures did the golden light of 
Claude’s unreal Arcadian scenes or the terrors of Salvator’s 


6 Whitley, Thomas Gainsborough, p. 92. 

7 Smith, Cat. Rais. VIII, 278-279. They finally went to John Miles of 
Leigh Court. Some notes on prices may be interesting. At Dr. Mead’s sale 
one Claude brought the best price in the sale, £113, and its companion £110. 
Walsh Porter paid 1000 guineas for the beautiful Enchanted Castle, now at 
Lockinge House, Berkshire, which had sold not long before for £520. A sea- 
port of Salvator’s brought £446 in 1798; the Colonna landscape, in 1802, 
£1550. Mr. Sloan asked £5000 for a Salvator in 1802. Claude’s Dido and 
Aeneas, a Colonna picture, brought £800 in 1802. On the Chigi Claude Mr. 
Buchanan’s agent set a value of 1500 guineas, and 1200 for the Colonna. 
The St. Ursula from the Barberini Palace fluctuated from £5000 to £1200 and 
back to £1500 in a short space of time. 


68 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


rocks and forests bring vague delight and dreamy unrest which 
prepared an audience for Coleridge, for Scott, for Shelley, for 
Keats himself? 


3 


Pictures (and copies) of Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar, numer- 
ous though they were, would not by themselves have sufficed to 
spread the forms of Italian landscape through England, nor 
to account for the debased and insipid manifestations of those 
forms which appear in painting, gardening, and literature. The 
enormous popularity which made these artists, especially Claude, 
even in their own lifetime, victims of counterfeiters and imitators, 
worked on afterwards into imitations of imitations, until at the 
close of the eighteenth century all three arts concerned with 
landscape moved back into closer relation with nature. Though 
the names of the imitators never rose quite to the level of the 
great originals, it may be assumed that Arthur Young was not 
alone in honestly preferring at times a Vernet to a Claude. Di- 
luted and debased, and wholly artificial as many of the imitations 
were, they yet held the charm of the unfamiliar in landscape and 
figures; and if they helped to propagate the notion that land- 
scape was beautiful only as it resembled Italian landscape, they 
also had part in making untrained eyes find beauties hitherto 
unnoticed in the Lakes, the Highlands, the mountains of Wales, 
even the nearer Derbyshire, because in these regions some re- 
semblance to the pictures could be traced. 

Almost the unique instance recorded of Claude’s anger is his 
outburst against the young Sebastian Bourdon, who, having 
watched the master at work, himself went forth and with his 
chameleon gift of imitation painted the same landscape, and 
exhibited the counterfeit to the public as Claude’s own. To 
this and similar frauds has been attributed the Liber Veritatis, 
the book of drawings in which Claude represented the pictures 
which he wished to establish as his own; though the book may 
well have been, as has been suggested, memoranda for his own 
pleasure and recollection. Bourdon, “ visionary, romantic, ab- 
stracted,”’ as Constable described him, was very popular in Eng- 
land. Other imitators were Pierre Patel, and Claude’s pupil, 
Giovanni Domenico. Hermann Swanevelt, “the Hermit of 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 69 


Italy,” said to have been admitted to Claude’s studio, and cer- 
tainly a most faithful copyist of his designs, was a prolific artist, 
and the teacher in turn of other artists, — of Jacques Rousseau, 
for instance, who came to England and was employed by the 
Duke of Montagu to decorate his house in Bloomsbury Square, 
later to be the British Museum. Jacques Courtois, known as “ il 
Borgognone,’ imitated Salvator Rosa, but chiefly his battle- 
pictures. Jan Both borrowed somewhat widely; he shows traces 
of Claude, of Gaspar, perhaps of Salvator, and probably of Bril 
and Elsheimer. Hans van Bloem, called “ Orizonte” for his 
delicate distances, was also more Italian than Dutch. Berghem 
did not visit Italy, but his work shows signs of Italian, or of 
Dutch-Italian influence, in its rocky scenery. All these men, 
and the earlier Paul Bril and Elsheimer, were great favourites 
with the English, and frequent in their galleries. 

Various later continental artists in the manners of Salvator 
and of the Claudians were popular in England. One was Claude- 
Joseph Vernet, who favoured sea-views and rocky harbours, 
much in the manner of Salvator, whom he admired intensely. 
There is a story of Vernet’s having himself lashed to the rigging 
of a ship in a wild storm, and exclaiming in rapture, while the 
lightning and thunder terrified his companions, “ What a noble 
scene!” Vernet’s contemporary and friend Zuccarelli was so 
honoured as to have his pictures the special passion of Frederick, 
Prince of Wales. Francois Paul Ferg, a Viennese artist, who 
established himself in London and died in 1740, painted scenes 
of ruins and cattle in the approved manner; Strutt says that 
they were much sought after by the virtuosi; though Ferg had a 
bad habit of accepting an advance payment and pawning the 
picture on its completion. 

The popularity of many of these imitators and minor artists 
may be seen in glancing through the lists in the English 
Connoisseur, or by the lists given in Arthur Young’s tours. 


But chiefly here regales your eyes 
Whate’er the Flemish school supplies, 
Of landscapes rare, with labour’d skill, 
By Barchem, Brughel, or Paul Bril, 
Names which the Connoisseur reveres, 
Tho’ harsh to nice poetic ears, 


790 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18th CENTURY ENGLAND 


says Richard Graves, writing On Mrs. C ——’s Villa at Hamp- 
stead in 1766. Thanks to the number of imitators and followers 
of the greater painters, it was indeed a poor pretender to fashion 
and taste who could not show some examples of the art of land- 
scape hanging on his private walls. 

Constable classed several of these derivative artists together, 
along with Loutherbourg, as men of talent and even power, who 
“lost sight of nature, and strayed into the vacant fields of 
idealism.” Berghem and Both, he says, “by an incongruous 
mixture of Dutch and Italian taste, produced a bastard style 
of landscape, destitute of the real excellence of either.” At 
one of his lectures he exhibited a print from Vernet, with trees 
in the manner of Salvator and rocks in that of Berghem, and 
“an emaciated French dancing-master in a dress something like 
one of Salvator’s banditti, intended by Vernet for a fisherman,” 
and went on to observe that imitators always render the defects 
of the model more conspicuous. ‘“ Sir George Beaumont, on see- 
ing a large picture by a modern artist, intended to be in the 
style of Claude, said, ‘I never could have believed that Claude 
Lorraine had so many faults, if I had not seen them all collected 
together on this canvas.’ ” 

Sir George Beaumont was himself an offender ; luckily he could 
not persuade Constable to follow his example. “Sir George 
Beaumont called. He liked what I was about, but wanted me 
to imitate pictures,’ writes Constable in a letter. One day 
Constable found Sir George at work, with a picture of Gaspar 
Poussin’s beside his easel. ‘‘ Now if I can match these tints I 
am sure to be right,” said he. ‘ But suppose Gaspar could rise 
from his grave,” replied Constable, “do you think he would 
know his own picture in its present state? or if he did, should 
we not find it difficult to persuade him that somebody had not 
smeared tar or cart-grease over its surface, and then wiped it 
imperfectly off?” The process by which the average landscape 
painter did his work went further than Beaumont’s, as Solomon 
Gessner reveals: 


I determined to draw after nature. But I soon found that my 
precision in copying from this master led me astray.... I found 
that I must form myself upon the works of the best masters... . 

8 Leslie, p. 180. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” of 


Trees were the first things I essayed, and I chose for my model Water- 
loo... .. I accustomed myself at the same time to work after Swane- 
feld and Berghem. . .. For rocks, I chose the bold masses of Berghem 
and Salvator Rosa, as my models. ... Lorrain instructed me in the 
disposition and harmony of foreground, and in the representing of 
soft fading distances. And I had recourse to Wouvermans, for those 


gently flowing slopes. ... Sandy and rocky heights, overgrown with 
shrubs and underwood, I copied from Berghem. ... The bold genius 
of Salvator Rosa astonished and delighted me.... But the two 


Poussins and Claud Lorrain at last possessed me entirely.® 


If we could see specimens of the work of all the landscape 
painters enumerated by Walpole in the Anecdotes of Painting, 
we should probably find most of them showing the influence of 
Italian or Dutch-Italian forms. The connection with Salvator 
of Cooke, Coloni, John Griffier, and Philip Boul, painters of land- 
scape in England early in the century, has been already noticed. 
Joseph Goupy (d. 1763), whom Strutt pronounced “a man of 
genius,” painter, engraver, and fashionable drawing master, ex- 
celled in imitations of Salvator. John Mortimer (1743-1779), 
himself given to reckless living,'® “ charmed with the wild spirit 
of Salvator Rosa, made the exploits of lawless banditti the chief 
subject of his pencil.” For this his horror-relishing contempo- 
raries admired him. 


The rapid Mortimer, in fancy strong, 
Marks the just horrours that to Vice belong, 


says Hayley, in commendation. Walpole did not admire him; 
“ Barry,” he writes to Mason in 1783, “calls Mortimer superior 


9 Works, Liverpool, 1802, I, 177 ff. Mr. William Whitley quotes a critic 
of the Royal Academy in the Gazetteer for 1790, as follows: ‘“ Many of our 
landscape painters have made their pictures by a receipt. Never having 
lived out of the metropolis, or seen any green thing except a pickled cucum- 
ber in an oil shop, they form their ideas upon the style of the old Flemish 
masters, copy their trees from Hobbema, their water from Ruysdael... .” 
Thomas Gainsborough, p. 300. 

10 “ Heaven-favoured, yet unhappy Mortimer! who could penetrate with 
gloomy enthusiasm the darkest recesses of horror, and irradiating the 
phantom’d dome with the awful beams of thy genius, couldst appal the 
gazer’s soul with scenes beyond the reach of human thought! —Oh! would 
not thy energetic mind have soared to still sublimer heights, had not thy 
daring wing been clogg’d by the fetters of vulgar dissipation? ’ Universal 
Magazine, vol. 88, p. 323. 


472 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND - 


to Salvator Rosa, though his best merit was in being Salvator’s 
imitator.” Like Salvator, Mortimer was considered to excel in his 
spirited figures, and often supplied the figures in the landscapes 
or sea-pieces of his contemporaries. Another somewhat Salvatori- 
ally-inspired painter was Philip Loutherbourg (c. 1740-1812), 
who was, like Goupy and some other artists of reputation, a 
scene painter, being employed by Garrick at Drury-Lane soon 
after he arrived in England, about 1771. Loutherbourg was one 
of the many painters of the Lakes. His contemporaries found 
in his work grandeur of design and vigour of execution; Barry 
pronounced his manner to be “‘ somewhat between Berghem and 
Salvator Rosa.” The Eiduphusikon, an entertainment which he 
devised about 1782, showing scenes on bits of canvas, with 
painted cork for foreground, and changing lights thrown on the 
whole, was largely a landscape show-box; the program began with 
sunrise over an Italian seaport, and included Niagara, Dover 
Castle at sunset, moonrise on a rocky coast, and a lurid portrayal 
of Milton’s Hell. To the British Salvators should perhaps be 
added Joseph Wright, “‘ Wright of Derby ” (1734-1797), whose 
grottoes, rocky coasts, and Italian seaports were numerous; he 
also painted Italian ruins, and other classic scenes more in the 
Claudian manner. 

The British Claudes were still more plentiful. John Griffier, 
son of the first John, was “a good copyist of Claude.” So was 
James van Huysum, brother of the popular painter of fruit and 
flower pieces. James lived a year or two with Sir Robert Walpole 
at Chelsea, says Walpole, “‘ and copied many pictures of Michael 
Angelo Caravaggio, Claude Lorrain, Gaspar, and other masters, 
which are now over the doors and chimneys in the attic 
story at Houghton.” The most prosperous imitators of Claude 
blended their model with Gaspar, and with the Dutch-Italians. 
The popularity of John Wootton (1678?-1765) arose primarily 
from his pictures of horses and dogs; he got forty guineas for 
a single horse, life-size. “‘ He afterwards applied to landscape, 
approached towards Gaspar Poussin, and sometimes imitated 
happily the glow of Claud Lorrain,” says Walpole; “at a long 
distance,” Redgrave qualifies. Constable cites as a crowning ex- 
ample of absurd imitation “the English Wootton, who painted 
country gentlemen in their wigs and jockey-caps, and top-boots, 





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"PWOTOOM Wey Aq pearizuq ‘ogi ‘s}ry Jo AjaII0g ‘wnIWeIg PUoddIeS 


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“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 73 


with packs of hounds, and placed them in Italian landscapes re- 
sembling those of Gaspar Poussin.” Wootton’s pictures were 
much used for decoration over chimney-pieces and doors, at other 
houses than Houghton; for example, at Ditchley, where were 
also “ striking pieces of Ruins, Rocks, and Cascades ” brought 
from Italy. 

The scene painters, Goupy and George Lambert, were also 
imitators of Claude. Goupy was better known for imitating 
Salvator, but worked in both manners. Lambert (1710-1765) 
was a pupil of Wootton’s, and like him a decorator of doors and 
chimneys, positions regularly assigned to landscape. He was 
also a painter of stage scenes, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent 
Garden, and originator of the famous Beef-steak Club. Not the 
least important influence on public taste was stage scenery. 
Lambert “ followed the manner of Gaspar, but with more rich- 
ness in his compositions,’ says Walpole. ‘ His trees were in a 
great taste.’ Hogarth makes flattering reference to him in The 
Analysis of Beauty (1753): “ The imitation of [the rising and 
setting sun] was Claude’s Lorain’s peculiar excellence, and is 
now Mr. Lambert’s.” Haydon reports old Wilson as pronouncing 
Lambert’s foliage to be eggs and spinach; “ yet Lambert got hun- 
dreds, where Wilson could hardly get shillings.” 

A third British Claude was George Smith of Chichester, very 
warmly admired in his own day. “ Thy pencil was The very 
wand of nature,” a reverend admirer addresses him, and contrasts 
unfavourably with his “pure undissembled truth” Claude’s 
“proud palaces”? and Loutherbourg’s “ Red skies and metal- 
colour’d trees.” John Smith, younger brother of George, was 
another Claudian. Though the Irish George Barret (1728?- 
1784) father of the water-colour painter, was famous for his dewy 
verdure and truly English colouring, he often followed Claude 
and the Italians in the forms of his compositions. Barret, it is 
said, might have been rich if he had lived more sensibly; he was 
certainly popular, and had several noble. patrons, especially the 
Dukes of Portland and of Buccleugh. It was Barret who painted 
that famous landscape room (of which more presently) for Mr. 
Lock at Norbury Park. 

In the year 1760 George Smith won first premium of the So- 
ciety of Arts for a large composition in the manner of Claude. 


74 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


That same year the earliest (if Gainsborough is not so accounted) 
of the great British landscape painters, Richard Wilson, finished 
his Niobe. But though Wilson found some patrons, he failed 
to attain the prosperity of Smith and Lambert, or the popularity 
of Barret. It is said that he often lacked money to buy canvas 
for a new picture, and would part with one of his paintings for a 
pot of beer and the heel of a cheese. “ When somebody is dead, 
somebody’s pictures will sell better,” he used to say to Beaumont ; 
and it proved true. Whatever the other influences upon him — 
Both and Vernet, Guardi, or the Dutch— that of Claude is 
evident not only in frequent choice of classic subject and in 
aerial perspective, but in the “strong diagonal or criss-cross of 
diagonals, emphasized usually by a tree in one corner of the 
picture, and sometimes by a ruin in the other,’ as Mr. Frank 
Rutter describes the popular pattern; insisting, however, that 
Wilson uses the pattern not of preference, but for pot-boiling. 
Wilson was truly of his time in making nature the handmaid of 
art. ‘“ He looked on cattle, as made only to form groups for his 
pictures, and on men as they composed harmoniously. One day, 
looking on the fine scene from Richmond Terrace, and wishing 
to point out a spot of particular beauty to the friend who ac- 
companied him, ‘ There,’ said he, holding out his finger, ‘ see near 
those houses, — there, where the figures are.’ He stood for some 
time by the waterfall of Terni in speechless admiration, and at 
length exclaimed, ‘ Well done; water, by God! ’” 

Wilson was the strongest influence on Turner in his early work, 
but soon gave place to Claude, long Turner’s chief model, and 
finally his rival. When Turner used to go as a youth to copy 
the portraits at Sir Joshua’s, he worked in the room with the 
Velasquez and the Claudes; and his patron, Dr. Munro, owned 
a number of Claude’s etchings.11_ The terms of his will certainly 
imply a sense of rivalry, if not jealousy. 

The English water-colour school assisted in spreading Italian 
forms. It derived from the taste for antiquities and the taste 
for improvements, which together created demand for topo- 
graphical draughtsmen. From the wash drawing to the water- 
colour sketch was a short step, and many of the draughtsmen 


11 Thornbury, Life of Turner, pp. 36, 55-58. Dr. Munro had also a 
landscape of Salvator’s. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 75 


took it, with good effect; for example, Paul Sandby, Webber, 
Hearn, and Girtin. Several of them were reminiscent of Italian 
painting, — George Barret the younger, Glover, Mortimer, Ibbet- 
son. The water-colour painter was the companion of travellers 
and antiquaries, as Alexander went with Lord Macartney to 
China, Webber with Captain Cook on his last voyage, Hearn to 
the Leeward Islands, John Smith with the Earl of Warwick to 
Italy, Girtin with James Moore, the antiquarian, and Cozens 
as part of the princely retinue of young Beckford on the grand 
tour. The water-colour artist was often a teacher, as Paul 
Sandby was to the royal children, and Girtin to Lady Gower and 
other noble’ patrons. 

One instance of imitation is worthy of separate mention, as 
showing not only the interest in landscape but also the peculiarly 
artificial treatment of it. It is told of Claude by his friend San- 
drart that he painted on four walls of a room in a Roman palace 
a set of landscapes which united in one whole? An English- 
man of taste, Mr. Lock of Norbury Park, had George Barret 
(whose skies Barry thought an improvement on Claude’s) paint 
such a room for him. The result was a curiosity much admired 
by tourists. James Woodhouse, Shenstone’s cobbler protégé, de- 
votes to it a poem, Norbury Park (1789), and Mr. Gilpin admir- 
ingly describes it thus, in part: 


The whole room represents a bower, or arbour, admitting a fictitious 
sky through a large oval at the top, and covered at the angles with 
trelliswork, interwoven with honeysuckles, vines, clustering grapes... . 
The sides of the room are divided by slight painted pilasters, appearing 
to support the trellis roof; and open to four views. That toward the 
south is real, consisting of the vale inclosed by Fox-hill, and the hills 
of Norbury and Dorking. . . . The scene represented on the west wall, 
is taken from the lakes of Cumberland. It is an exact portrait of none 
of them; but a landscape formed of some of the happiest circumstances 
which belong to all. No real view could present so beautiful and com- 
plete a picture. ... Woods are scattered about every part, which give 
these scenes a greater richness than nature hath given to any of the 
lakes of Cumberland.... All this scenery is contained in various 
removes of distance. ... The other grand landscape ... is sylvan. 

In the distance it sinks into a rich flat country, through which a 
sluggish stream, winding its course, discharges itself into the sea. The 


12 Lady Dilke thought traces of it were discoverable in a palace of the 
Muti-Papazurri family. Claude Lorrain, pp. 33-34. 





76 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


north side ... offers two landscapes; divided by the breast of the 
chimney; which is adorned by a pier-glass, let into the wall, and covered 
thick with a frame-work of honey-suckles, vines, wild roses. ... These 
two pictures are a continuation of the scene exhibited on the western 
wall, which they unite with the landscape on the east.... The time 
of day is about an hour before the sun sets, which after a rainy after- 
noon is breaking from the watery clouds. ... In the north-east angle, 
a ray of sunshine, breaking through the gloom, gilds a castled cliff... . 
All the landscapes, both within and without the room, appears illumined 
by the same sun. The union too between natural and artificial land- 
scape is still further assisted by a few straggling trees, which are 
planted before the windows. 


The Claudian touches here are obvious; though Gilpin says 
that the room is in imitation of one done at a villa near Rome 
by Gaspar Poussin. Why such rooms did not spring up all over 
the country is hard to understand. Only one other is recorded, 
that of Sir Nigel Gresley’s, which Miss Seward found entranc- 
ing. It had the additional beauties of a grotto of spars, ores, 
and shells in the chimney-piece, and a real green paling with 
little wicket-gates ajar, set a few inches from the walls. ‘ The 
perspective is so well preserved,” she concludes, “ as to present 
a landscape deception little inferior to the watery panorama.” 4 


4 
For training the eye, the invention of prints was, as Shaftes- 
bury said, “ answerable to printing in the commonwealth of 
letters.” The print made the masters of landscape intimately 
familiar to thousands, whereas the paintings could be known, 
and that for the most part only by brief encounters, to but 
hundreds. “ By prints the pictures of the most celebrated artists 


13 Western Parts, pp. 14-19. The astonishing thing is that Gilpin in the 
next breath condemns as inartistic a carved head from Otaheite, which had 
real hair. “ The mixture indeed of reality and imitation is very disgusting.” 
The room at Norbury was still in existence when John Thomas Smith was 
living, but now is vanished with the house. WNollekens, ed. W. Whitten, 1920, 
II, 100. 

14 Letters, III, 380 (1794). The panorama deserves at least a note. Gir- 
tin painted one of London. (Century of Painters, I, 399.) There was one 
called “The Fashionable Tour Along the Banks of the Clyde,” shown in 
New Bond Street, “ Tickets for the season, not transferable, 5s.” It had an 
explanatory poem by James Arbuckle, M. A., called Glotta (London, 1810). 
See Wordsworth, The Prelude, Bk. 7. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 77 


are infinitely multiplied,” says the Abbé du Bos; and compares 
prints to prose romances, paintings to poems. 

Print collecting was fashionable in the seventeenth century, 
among the initiate; near the close of the eighteenth, it was 
general. “‘ Almost every man of taste is in some degree a collector 
of prints,’ —so Strutt opens the preface to his Dictionary of 
Engravers (1785). The very process of mezzotint was attributed, 
thanks to Evelyn’s Sculptura, to Prince Rupert, a leader of taste 
in his time. If Evelyn’s work is a gauge of the “ connoissance ” 
of that period, we must conclude that discrimination was then but 
faint. Evelyn seems to consider sharp relief the highest quality 
in a picture. He shows little interest in landscapes. When he 
pleads for “ more Landskips,” he means “ views of the Environs, 
Approaches, and Prospects of our nobly situated Metropolis.” 
Presumably he had in mind such prints as Hollar’s topographical 
views, which anticipated the numerous topographical drawings 
of the next century. Pepys had, we know, two great books 
filled with prints illustrating the history of London. The collec- 
tion of Prince Eugene, said by Gilpin to have included all the 
works of all the chief engravers, and to have cost £80,000, is 
significant of the desire for mere amassing which characterized 
many a collector of repute in the eighteenth century. English 
residence on the continent during the Protectorate helped to in- 
crease interest in prints. The brilliant work of Faithorne in por- 
trait must have enhanced an appreciation initiated by the produc- 
tions of Nanteuil. Faithorne, devoted royalist, as he had proved 
in battle and prison, opened a shop near Temple Bar after the 
Restoration, where he sold not only his own and other English 
work, but also prints from continental hands. His work on en- 
graving appeared in 1662, a sign—along with several other 
English publications on the subject —that the virtuoso in this 
field was recognized. The prints which Sir John Somers used to 
carry about in his coach seat on journeys were portraits. But 
prints of history-pictures and landscapes, by engravers like the 
great Marc Antonio, by the Sadelers and Perelle, were also very 
popular, and very numerous. The English visitor to Italy 
brought back prints as modern travellers bring photographs. 
Evelyn tells of his efforts to secure them. But Richardson, 
though he often refers to the prints of paintings, says that he is 


78 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


“Not very conversant with These; those that Are will find 
that those References are not so frequent as they might have 
been.” His remarks about prints, by the way, show how un- 
educated in elementary matters was the public he addressed. 
Wright speaks frequently and familiarly of prints of the pic- 
tures he mentions. 

Etchings by Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar were too few 
in number to be of great influence; and in spite of the admira- 
tion for his painting, there was obtuseness to those merits of 
Claude’s etching which seem to have waited till modern times 
to reach the warmest appreciation, such as Seymour Haden and 
Hamerton bestow. He was rather an etcher for artists than 
for the public; as Hamerton says, “‘ No etcher was ever less 
anxious to produce an impression of cleverness.” Those who 
would value his special qualities were even rarer in the eighteenth 
century than they are now. Moreover, his plates were few in 
number, wretched impressions were (and are) many; the best 
very few. It is not surprising that Gilpin, who admits that he 
has not seen Le Bouvier, pronounces them often “ the dirty 
shapes of something, which he could not express.” Salvator’s 
work also was not abundant; and his popularity made unscrupu- 
lous dealers retouch worn plates till the number of bad im- 
pressions was discouraging. We suspect that Salvator’s merits 
of vigour and originality — “ dash ” — received fuller recognition 
than the quieter charms of Claude. The few plates by the 
Poussins were sought after, in a way which makes us doubt 
whether the special qualities of the etching were much recognized 
by the average collector of that time. Far more numerous and 
more popular were the etchings by Both, Berghem, Swanevelt, 
and Waterlo, — often better work as etching than their painting 
as painting. Swanevelt was especially prolific, and provided the 
ruin-lovers with much entertainment for their eyes, in the hun- 
dred or more plates he produced. It is significant of the taste 
of the age that Gilpin speaks slightingly of Rembrandt’s land- 
scape prints as having “ little to recommend them besides their 
effect.” Even Strutt, who praises Rembrandt highly, names 
of his landscapes only the Three Trees and the Mill. The 
etchings by British artists were chiefly inferior, and not 
numerous, Chatelain, John Griffier, George Lambert, Ferg, 


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“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 79 


and de Lerpiniére all executed landscapes, on the approved 
model. 

Diffusion of the Italian ideal of landscape came chiefly through 
the engravers. A few continental engravers contributed. Sadeler, 
of whose prints Walpole speaks with some affection, engraved 
after Bril, as did van Nieulant, also of the seventeenth century. 
Dominique Barriére made some contemporary prints after 
Claude. Gabriel Perelle, much respected, produced not only 
engravings from Gaspar Poussin but also compositions of his 
own often decidedly in the Italian manner. In the eighteenth 
century Volpato engraved after Salvator, Isaac Moucheron from 
Gaspar, and the gentleman-amateur, Claude-Henri Watelet, 
from Jan Both. 

The British school of landscape engraving, which came into 
being in the course of the last three quarters of the eighteenth 
century, was both the result and in turn a leading cause of ad- 
miration for the Italianate mode of landscape. In the develop- 
ment of this school Arthur Pond (1705-1758) and his partner, 
George Knapton, were influential. Their most famous produc- 
tion, the large volume of prints in the chalk manner in imitation 
of drawings of the great masters, contains many examples of 
Italian landscape, chiefly of the familiar form. Among the 
prints by Pond which make up some two-thirds of the collection, 
are specimens from Claude, Salvator, the Poussins, Jan Both, 
and Grimaldi. Two large oval landscapes with figures are prob- 
ably the prints “ after Salvator ” with which Pond is credited 
by Walpole. Pond was important as a collector of prints and 
drawings —he was one of the chief connoisseurs of his day — 
and as a publisher, the most important of the time preceding 
Boydell. In 1744 he published a set of prints after pictures in 
British collections, which gives evidence as to the number and 
the contents of these collections, the taste for Italian landscape, 
and also, in many instances, the low standard of landscape- 
engraving. 

Among those who worked for Pond was the eccentric Jean 
Baptiste Claude Chatelain (1710-1771), engraver, etcher, painter 
—he was one of the first to copy the scenery of the Lakes — 
drawing-master, and teacher of engraving. He was an amusing 
person. Living in an old house in Chelsea, which he took be- 


89 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


cause of a dream that it held treasure, he spent days lying 
face down on the floor, listening for the betraying chink of 
coins which might be shaken by the jar of passing coaches, or 
pulled at the wainscoting until his hands were too bruised to 
do his work. ‘‘ Had this man been possessed of prudence and 
assiduity, equal to his great abilities,” sighs Strutt, “ what might 
not have been expected at his hand?” Examples of his original 
etching show his respectful following of the conventional pattern. 
He engraved after Gaspar Poussin. One of his pupils in engrav- 
ing, John Wood (c. 1720-c. 1780) reflects no great credit upon 
his teacher; among Wood’s mediocre productions is an en- 
graving after a small painting by Salvator which was in the 
collection of William Kent. Another of Chatelain’s pupils, much 
more creditable, was Francis Vivares (1709-1780), also of French 
birth, who is especially known for his engravings after Claude, 
some of them done in association with Woollett, whom he partly 
instructed in the art of engraving. As predecessor and teacher 
of Woollett, Vivares may be called the founder of the British 
school of landscape engraving. 

William Woollett (1735-1785) was the greatest of the school, 
in technical excellence. “ His print of Roman Edifices in Ruins,” 
says Frederick Keppel, “is probably the finest landscape in 
engraving.” “ Kupferstiche die eine Kraft, Warme, und Har- 
monie darbieten, wie sie, vor ihm, im Landschaftsfache kein 
Kunstler hervorgebracht hat,” says Adam von Bartsch. Modern 
taste has grown away from these magnificent great plates with 
their infinitely laborious rendering of detail and of light and 
shade; but to one who goes to them prepared by re-reading of 
Thomson, Dyer, Collins, Gray, or many of the letter-writers of 
the eighteenth century, they have a charm which interprets their 
enormous popularity in their own time. Woollett developed the 
use of preliminary etching of the main lines as it had never before 
been employed. Sometimes he would expose a plate to four or five 
preliminary bitings. Often he etched the plates for other men 
to finish with the burin. It would have been impossible for 
one man to do all the work on those enormous reproductions. 
Even granted assistance, it is not surprising that Woollett cele- 
brated the completion of a picture by firing off a cannon from 
the roof of his house in Rathbone Place, Charlotte Street. To 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 81 


Woollett partly, but also to Hogarth and Sir William Strange, 
may be attributed the shift which, by 1788, made the value of 
British prints exported to France greater than that of French 
prints imported into Britain. Woollett engraved not only from 
Claude —his most famous work was after Claude, including 
such pictures as The Sacrifice to Apollo (1764), and The En- 
chanted Castle, which he completed when Vivares left it un- 
finished at his death —but also from Wilson, George Smith, 
Zuccarelli, Vernet, and Swanevelt. 

Another engraver of masterly technique was Richard Earlom 
(1742-1822), who combined etching with mezzotint. Earlom’s 
masterpiece was the reproduction in etching and mezzotint of 
Claude’s drawings in the Liber Veritatis, in the Devonshire 
collection. This elaborate work of two hundred plates on which 
Earlom was engaged for several years was first published in 
1777. In 1819 Earlom added a third volume, made up after other 
drawings by Claude. So popular was the Liber that Earlom 
retouched the plates several times for reprinting. Its influence 
on the public was very great; for the amateur artist it was a 
resource, a book of patterns; and for the landscape gardener it 
was rich in suggestions, as Knight’s poem, The Landscape, 
indicates. Though the drawings in the Liber, being made after 
instead of before the finished picture, lack the peculiar values 
of Claude’s drawings in general, and though Earlom may, as 
Lady Dilke accuses him of doing, have done violence to the 
designs he copied, still his work has much beauty and much 
technical interest. As is familiarly known, it gave the inspira- 
tion for Turner’s Liber Studiorum ; and for Earlom’s Liber, as 
for Turner’s, we have examples of the delicate pure line pre- 
liminary etching. Earlom was by no means confined to land- 
scape in his engraving; but among the pictures which he copied 
for Boydell are several from Salvator Rosa, including Jacob 
and the Angel, and some from the Houghton Collection. 

A long line of minor engravers may be briefly noticed, too 
important in the spread of these pictures to be omitted, though 
their work is of varying excellence. For Salvator there is the 
early Hamlet Winstanley (1698-1756), son of the famous and 
unfortunate builder of the Eddystone light, who was, by the 
way, also an engraver of original landscape. Hamlet Win- 


82 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


stanley was a pupil of Kneller in painting, and went to Italy to 
study; but on his return to England confined himself to en- 
graving. He produced several plates after Salvator, including 
Hagar and Ishmael, Glaucus and Scylla, and a picture of rob- 
bers; some of this work as early as 1730. Another, and an 
important engraver of Salvator, whom he also imitated in paint- 
ing, was Joseph Goupy (c. 1700-1763), drawing-master to royalty 
and gentility, and foe of Handel. Goupy’s set of seven pic- 
tures after Salvator, from British collections, though but tame 
reproductions, were widely known. Simon Francois Ravenet 
(1721 ?-1774), who lived and died at Mother Red Cap’s, executed 
Salvator’s Prodigal Son, and Poussin’s Monument in Arcadia; 
not primarily landscapes, to be sure. John Brown (1719-1790), 
fellow-apprentice and later on assistant to Woollett, won reputa- 
tion with his St. John and also engraved Apollo and the Sibyl. 
Though not landscapes, the Belisarius (1757) and the Laomedon 
(1775) of Sir Robert Strange, the great classical engraver, may be 
noticed. Of the former the Critical, not altogether from Scot- 
tish prejudice, remarked that it was “by far the most elegant 
and best finished print that any artist of this nation ever 
produced ” up to that time. At the Society of Artists, R. Pranker 
exhibited a View from Salvator in 1761; and Lady Augusta 
Louisa Greville won medals for various prints after Salvator; 
one of these is of 1759, one of 1762. From their style, we sur- 
mise that Lady Greville was a pupil of Goupy. Later repre- 
sentations of Salvator are by James Heath (b. 1757), a study 
of soldiers, and by William Sharp (b. 1749), Diogenes; and two 
coloured landscapes in 1799 by John Murphy (1748-1820). 

Claude was far more frequently engraved, and indeed lent 
himself better to engraving. James Mason (1710-1783) worked 
after Gaspar Poussin and Claude for Pond and for Boydell; he 
did prints after Claude in 1744, 1769, and 1774. Mason was 
a collaborator with Vivares, and his early work is very closely 
in the manner of Vivares. Thomas Major (1720-1799), who, 
unlike most of the British school, studied in Paris — he was 
imprisoned in reprisal after Culloden— was the first engraver 
elected to the Royal Academy. He worked after several of 
the landscape artists, and from Claude took a seaport and a 
pastoral landscape, the latter in 1753. John Brown’s Cephalus 





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“SNIONY HIIM AdVOSANV’T 





“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 83 


and Procris was published in 1779. James Peak (1730?~1782) 
was one of the more excellent minor engravers, and also an 
etcher of some merit. He engraved a Morning from Claude 
in 1767. Of the lesser engravers, Pierre Charles Canot (1710- 
1777), better known for sea-pieces, also worked after Claude and 
Gaspar. John Sebastian Miller (fl. 1760) did one landscape 
from Claude. William Byrne (1743-1805) was a prolific work- 
man, of technical skill, who worked after Bril, Both, Zuccarelli, 
Vernet, Wilson, and Smith; he copied one of the Methuen 
Claudes. Joseph Strutt (c. 1749-1802) engraved two of Claude’s 
landscapes in the chalk manner; James Fittler (1758-1835), 
chiefly a marine engraver, the Ursula, and the Arch of Constan- 
tine; James Newton (b. 1748), various pictures after Claude and 
Zuccarelli ; and Wilson Lowry (b. 1762) after Claude and Poussin. 
Some of the colour prints of John Baptist Jackson, designer of 
wall-papers, were in the Italian style, with ruins and distances. 

Illustrations in books often showed traces of Italian influence. 
Some early examples (they become too numerous to list, later 
on) are the frontispiece by Kirkall to Miscellaneous Poems, 
published by Lintot in 1712; Kirkall’s plate in Elijah Fenton’s 
Poems on Several Occasions, in 1717; the plates by Kent in 
Gay’s Poems on Several Occasions, 1720; those by Wootton in 
Gay’s Fables, 1727. William Kent is particularly given to weak 
imitation of Italian models, with original complications. He is 
said to have gained his inspiration for landscape gardening from 
working on the illustrations to the Faery Queene; his designs 
for the four seasons in the first complete edition of The Seasons, 
1730, are full of Italian landscape reminiscences. An amusing 
late example is the frank parody of Claude, in the first volume 
of Richard Graves’ Columella (1779) a satire on landscape gar- 
dening; the plate shows the hero’s grounds, stream, wooded hill, 
Sibyl’s temple, and low-placed sun. Even Hogarth shows a 
few hints of Italian influence, —a Salvatorial tree in The Good 
Samaritan, and the little cherub gazing at a Sibyl’s temple, in 
one of his smaller plates. That temple was omnipresent; it is 
always cropping up in the fanciful designs which adorn the 
magazines. 

The growth of print collecting may be read in many references. 
It was a passion already strong in 1687. Describing the sale of 


84 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Sir Peter Lely’s prints and drawings in that year, Roger North 
says: “It was wonderful to see with what earnestness people 
attended this sale. One would have thought bread was exposed 
in a famine. Those that bought laid down their guineas, which 
a receiver immediately fingered, ten, twenty, thirty, &c., and 
gat their papers up, well covered with a sort of soft paper we 
had in plenty for them, and put them either in their bosoms, 
or very close and near to them.’!® Advertisements in the 
Spectator reflect considerable interest in prints. But greater 
interest developed toward 1750, when other artistic tastes were 
strong. Advertisements of prints in the papers increase; there 
are five in the Evening Advertiser for March 7, 1754. Gilpin’s 
Essay on Prints, first published in 1768, was composed, he says, 
some fifteen years earlier. It was evidently popular, for there 
were five editions, the second that same year, the last in 1802. 
If Gilpin was representative of polite taste in matters of art, as 
Walpole’s praise, and the frequent excerpts in magazines in- 
dicate, then it had not gone far since Richardson. Important 
for us to notice is his pronounced predilection for the Italian 
style of landscape. Not only does he slight Rembrandt, but 
comparing Waterlo with Swanevelt, he says that Waterlo “ saw 
nature through a Dutchman’s eye,’ whereas Swanevelt had 
“ warmed his imagination with the grandeur and variety of 
Italian views.” 

No person of taste could be without a collection of prints. 
From Thomson to John Wilkes, from duke to lace-merchant, 
the collectors seem to include almost every person of even moder- 
ate intelligence and fortune. Few collections reached the size 
of Dr. Mead’s, the sale of which took fourteen nights, in 1755. 
At the other end of the century, Turner’s patron, Dr. Munro, 
was such a devotee that he had a special rack built in his 
travelling carriage, to carry a portfolio for his pleasure as he 
journeyed. Thomson, as his praise of engraving in Liberty 
would lead us to expect, had a large collection which he left to 
his friend Gray. We hear from John Thomas Smith of Nol- 
lekens and his wife, one collecting prints after Poussin, the 
other after Claude; and as the engravers could be cajoled into 
presenting them with copies, the collection cost them nothing. 


15 Autobiography, ed. Jessopp, 1887, p. 199. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 85 


Looking over prints was a polite form of entertainment. They 
were usually kept pasted in great scrapbooks, with the list of 
the contents carefully written in front. Such a scrapbook, from 
Wilton House, is to be seen at the print room of the Metro- 
politan Museum, with a list of contents showing that it was 
given over to Italian landscape, the names including Claude, 
the Poussins, Salvator, Paul Bril, Grimaldi. “In the afternoon,” 
says Mrs. Delany in 1736, describing the employment of time 
where she is staying, “there are billiards, looking over prints, 
coffee, tea, cribbage.”’ Next year, “When you see Sir Robert 
Throck, pray make him my compliments; I hope to be in town 
time enough to restore him his book of prints.” Of Rouseham, 
Sir Clement Cotterel’s, “A new library was added to it not many 
years ago, a most magnificent room, and finished with the 
highest expense. There are . . . nearly five thousand volumes, 
and prints that cost between two and three thousand pounds, — 
I mean the prints only” (1743). ‘“ This day se’nnight we are to 
spend at the Bishop of Derry’s, a day of virtu, in the morning 
prints, drawings, pictures; in the evening, music.” ‘ Where 
I have not pictures J must have prints; otherwise, I think prints 
best in books,” she observes. Miss Talbot, apologizing to Mrs. 
Carter for remissness in writing, gives as one of her activities, 
“‘ Somebody has sent us a fine set of prints that must be looked 
over directly” (1751). We remember Sir Joshua Reynolds’ 
Portraits of Two Gentlemen, looking over prints, painted in 1777. 

The development of the landscape print brought new in- 
terest. Lady Luxborough writes Shenstone in 1750 of her 
pleasure in seeing the prints brought to her by Smith, the en- 
graver. Shenstone refers frequently to his enjoyment of them. 
He and Lady Luxborough have show-boxes for them; Shenstone’s 
cost fourteen shillings, and in it ‘“Smith’s Views (with a little 
colouring) appear ravishing.” Sir John Hawkins conformed to 
the taste, as Johnson did not (though it is interesting to ob- 
serve Johnson’s not infrequent use of the language of painting). 


One evening at the Club, [says Hawkins] I came in with a small roll 
of prints —-I think they were by Perelle, — and laying them down with 
my hat Johnson’s curiosity prompted him to take it up and unroll it; 
he viewed the prints severally with great attention, and asked me what 
sort of pleasure such things could afford me; I told him, that as repre- 


86 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 181TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


sentations of rural nature, containing an assemblage of such particulars 
as render rural scenes delightful, they presented to my mind the objects 
themselves, and that my imagination realised the prospect before me; 
he said, that was more than his would do, for that in his whole life he 
was never capable of discerning the least resemblance of any kind 
between a picture and the subject it was intended to represent. 


The passage is often cited in proof of Johnson’s limitations of 
vision; but a glance at Perelle’s highly mannered compositions 
suggests that there is something to be said in Johnson’s defence, 
so far as these particular pictures were concerned. 

We may imagine the childhood experience of Sir Samuel 
Romilly duplicated in many another life: 


[My father] was an admirer of the fine arts, but pictures being too 
costly for his purchase, he limited himself to prints. ... I found a 
great deal of amusement in turning over the prints he was possessed of, 
became a great admirer of pictures, never omitted an opportunity of 
seeing a good collection, knew the peculiar style of almost every master. 

I love to transport myself in idea into our little parlour, with its 
green paper, and the beautiful prints of Vivares, Bartolozzi, or Strange, 
from the pictures of Claude, Caracci, Raphael, and Corregio [sic] with 
which its walls were elegantly adorned. 


The part which the prints in Leigh Hunt’s room, where Keats 
used to stay the night, may have played in developing his 
imagery, is suggested by Sir Sydney Colvin. Hazlitt gives an 
instance from his own youth: 


A print [of the Arch of Constantine] hung in a little room in the 
country, where we used to contemplate it by the hour together. It 
was the most graceful, the most perfect of all Claude’s compositions. 
The Temple seemed to come forward into the middle of the picture, 
as in a dance, to show its unrivalled beauty, the Vashti of the scene! 
Young trees bent their branches over it with playful tenderness; and 
on the opposite side of a stream, at which cattle stooped to drink, 
there grew a stately grove, erect, with answering looks of beauty: the 
distance between retired into air and glittering shores. Never was there 
scene so fair, so absolute, that in itself summed all delight! 


: 
Prints were frequently the medium by which ladies and 
gentlemen arrived at the practice of painting. Sometimes they 
got no further than using the prints for interior decorating, 


































































































WY; 97 

















Saw 



























































te Blond exc Gun Prat 


Perellé jn. ct fe 


LANDSCAPE DESIGNED AND ENGRAVED BY GABRIEL PERELLE. 





“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 87 


framing them by ingenious home-made devices, adorning chim- 
ney-boards and corner-cupboards, or making them into trans- 
parencies, such as were displayed in the attic room at Mans- 
field Park, “ Tintern Abbey holding its station . . . between 
a cave in Italy and a moonlight lake in Cumberland.” Print 
transparencies are as old as the seventeenth century. Edward 
Orme had a special varnish, to make the paper transparent, 
instead of scraping it off.* A process of colouring them to make 
them look like oil paintings was sold to ladies under a pledge 
of secrecy; Mr. Gilpin describes some of the results at Inverary 
Castle, in 1776: 


In one of the apartments we were struck with a number of small 
paintings in a fine old mellow style; but all of them evidently by the same 
hand. ... We found them all copies from pictures we knew... . 
We were informed, they were all the work of the present duchess of 
Argyle; and were in fact mezzotinto prints, varnished with gum copal; 
and painted on the back, in a manner lately invented. I have seen no 
invention of the kind that has so much merit. Coloured prints are in 
general miserable daubings. 


For learning to paint, the print was considered almost in- 
dispensable. Mrs. Delany writes in 1732: “I hope you draw 
sometimes. I fancy if you copied some landscapes, and did them 
in India ink, you would like it better than faces. I am sure, 
with very little application, you would do them very well; but 
copy only from the best prints.” This use of prints by herself 
and the Countess of Hertford is shown in Mrs. Rowe’s letters, 
and also the landscapes in India ink. Miss Talbot, who like 
Mrs. Delany was a pupil of Goupy, is better advised. She tells 
Mrs. Carter not to take landscapes from prints, but to draw in 
black and white for some years; “ and in drawing, you must 
attend not so much to the finishing and shading as to the exact- 
ness and spirit of the outline. For this you must copy from the 
best prints of the best masters ...and begin with figures 
rather than landscapes. ... I don’t mean to say any thing 
of taking sketches from nature, which is a different art, and a 
very pretty one to be sure.” 

Advertisements in the newspaper show how amateur artists 
were multiplying between 1730 and 1765. In the former year, 

16 Hind, Short History of Engraving, second ed., 1911, p. 13. 


88 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Alexander Emerton, Colour-man, announces to the Ladies that 
he sells ‘‘ all sorts of Water-Colours and Varnishes, with every 
thing necessary for the new Japanning.” Next year is published 
The Art of Drawing and Painting in Water Colours; “ whereby 
a Stranger to those Arts may immediately be rendered capable of 
delineating any View or Prospect with the utmost Exactness ; 
of colouring any print or Drawing in the most beautiful Manner.” 
In the Weekly Amusement for 1735 appear instructions, given 
at a female correspondent’s request, for painting in water-colours 
in either “the light Italian way,” or “the dark way.” The 
young lady is told to take a print or painting, lay over it a 
piece of oiled paper, trace the outline in black, turn over the 
oiled paper and trace again in red chalk, then lay it chalk side 
down on the paper she is to paint on, and go over the lines 
with a quill. It seems assumed that she will paint landscapes; 
as Mrs. Delany said, they were easier than faces. Numerous 
drawing books were advertised after 1750: The Art of Drawing 
in Perspective (1755); The Complete Drawing Book, containing 
‘““Landskips, Views and Ruins, with outlines to each plate. 
Made easier to the Comprehension of Beginners than any Book 
of this Kind hitherto made public” (1755); The Complete 
Drawing-Master (1764); The Whole Art of Drawing. The 
Artist’s Vade Mecum. “ Elegantly engraved in 100 Folio Copper 
Plates. . . . Collected from the Works of the greatest Masters ” 
(1764); The Practice of Perspective on the Principles of Dr. 
Brook Taylor (1764); The Ladies New and Poltte Memoran- 
dum Book for the Year 1764, containing among other things 
“the most plain Directions for the Art of Drawing ” as well as 
“Twenty-four new Country Dances.” 

The drawing-masters were not very numerous until the last 
third of the century. Artists like Richardson and Jervas gave 
instruction on occasion. There were also Liotard, a portrait- 
painter (who used to walk the streets in Turkish dress and long 
beard), the eccentric Chatelain, and Joseph Goupy. A story 
much repeated in the magazines, after Goupy’s death, of his 
appealing to George III for aid in his poverty and distress, on 
the ground that when the king was a small boy, under paternal 
displeasure, Goupy had begged his release from durance, sug- 
gests that the drawing-master’s lot was not always prosperous. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS ” 89 


Farington gives the testimony of “ Mr. Melchair” of Oxford 
in 1800: “ He mentioned how much the Arts had advanced in 
this country, and said that when He first taught musick & 
drawing in London there were only 5 or 6 drawing masters — 
viz. P. Sandby, — Bonneau, who had been brought from the Spa 
by some Ladies, — Chatelain — & some few others, — now said 
he there was hundreds. .. . He spoke of Sir George Beaumont, 
& Lord Aylesford with great pride as having been his former 
pupils.” Paul Sandby taught the royal children; Girtin had 
many noble pupils. Gainsborough lived fora time at Holkham, 
and gave instruction to the two older daughters of the art- 
loving Thomas Coke of Norfolk. Crome —but that was near 
the edge of the next century —taught Richenda Gurney, the 
sister of Elizabeth Fry. Mr. Percy Lubbock, in Earlham, gives 
a delightful account of her productions, which were just what 
hundreds of other young ladies produced: ‘‘ Winding paths, 
and broken gates, and ivied walls in unlikely places; and the tree 
that coils, and the tree beside it that zigzags, and the third, just 
beyond, that is evenly scored with flowing curves.” .. . “ Pic- 
tures of Earlham ... resolutely picturesque, as though the 
drawing-master had stood looking over the shoulder of the 
artist, pointing out the bough of a tree should always chance 
to arch over the foreground, and a figure in a red cloak pass 
across the middle distance in a woodland scene. The facts of 
the landscape gave way if they conflicted with the rules of the 
game, which the artist played conscientiously; but they were 
pretty pictures, not without an elegant distinction.” 

It is easy to sympathize with old Richard Wilson, who, being 
asked out of pity to dinner by Beechey, first inquired, though 
starving, ‘“ You have daughters, Mr. Beechey, do they draw? ” 
» and only on being assured that they were musical, accepted. 
The fashionable damsel depicted by Hannah More in Coelebs is 
of course exaggerated: “I have gone on with my French and 
Italian . . . and am beginning German. Then comes my draw- 
ing master; he teaches me to paint flowers and shells, and to 
draw ruins and buildings, and to take pictures, and half a dozen 
fire screens which I began for mama... . I learn varnishing, 
and gilding, and japanning, and next winter I shall learn model- 
ling, and etching, and engraving in mezzotinto, and acquatinto, 


90 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


for Lady Di Dash learns etching, and mama says as I shall 
have a better fortune than Lady Di, she vows I shall learn every 
thing she does.” This goes beyond Miss Bingley’s list of ac- 
complishments for an elegant female. Though the Pompadour 
and Queen Victoria both etched, that accomplishment among 
ladies in general seems to have been rather rare; Strutt lists 
Miss Blake, “a young lady of distinction,” for her portraits, 
and Lady Greville for her etchings after Salvator and others. 
Lady Greville’s younger brother, Lord Charles, it may be noted, 
achieved some aquatints of topographical landscapes. 

The young lady artist is a subject for writers of verse. The 
paintings by Mrs. Anne Killigrew, described by Dryden, were 
no doubt better than the works of Clarinda, who both painted 
and did wax-work, in 1686: 


Sometimes you curious Landskips represent, 
And arch ’em o’er with gilded Firmament: 
Then in JAPAN some rural Cottage paint. .. .17 


Mrs. Elizabeth Rowe “ lov’d the pencil when she had hardly 
strength and steadiness of hand sufficient to guide it . . . and it 
never ceas’d to be her amusement, at times, till her death,” — 
the one exception among diversions; for she was sternly set 
against all frivolous employment of time. But she doubtless 
agreed with The Female Spectator (1745), that “ Painting, 
especially History, Landscape and Sea-pieces, is also an excel- 
lent Promoter of Reflection; — Such Prospects charm the Eye, 
and thence gain an easy Passage into the Soul, exciting Curiosity 
in the most Indolent.” 

Mrs. Delany, pupil of Goupy, was a celebrated female amateur ; 
though her paper flowers brought more fame than her painting. 
She began her studies when past thirty, and chiefly copied from _ 
pictures and prints, but also sketched from nature. The study 
of drawing she preferred to that of music, for the young, as 
leading into better company. Another famous amateur was 
Lady Diana Beauclerk, whose pictures “in sut water” for his 
Mysterious Mother won Horace Walpole’s unqualified en- 
comiums: “ Guido’s grace, Albano’s children, Poussin’s expres- 
sion, Salvator’s boldness in landscape,” “ such drawing that Sal- 


17 Poetical Recreations, 1688, p. 172. 


“AJISIOATUA) PIvAIeY ‘wnasnyy Wy 3304 ‘“zgLI ‘syIW Jo AjaII0g ye poszIqryxyY 


“ATTIATAY) VISHONY AAVT Ad VSOY YOLVAIVS AdALAV GCHHOLA AdVOSANvV’T 











“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” QI 


vator Rosa and Guido could not surpass their execution and 
poetry.” Georgianna, Duchess of Devonshire, travelling in the 
Alps with Elizabeth, the later Duchess, wrote poetry which 
Elizabeth illustrated with landscapes of her own composing. 
Arthur Young was cordially disposed toward the lady amateur. 
“In Mr. Ramy’s house on Yarmouth-Quay, he has furnished a 
parlour with drawings of Mrs. Ramy’s execution with a hot 
poker. These are several pieces of ruins after Panni ... and 
some Landscapes. There is frequently a spirit in the strokes 
superior to the original prints.”’ He considered copies of paint- 
ings in needlework, by Miss Morret, ‘“ the most curious things 
to be seen at York.” They included landscapes by Zuccarelli, 
Gaspar Poussin, and Salvator; and if the rocks were not those 
of Salvator, the fault was not Miss Morret’s, but that of the 
picture she was copying. 

Jane Austen makes the sensible Eleanor an artist, while her 
emotional sister is merely an admirer of the picturesque. It is 
notable that Marianne finds Edward’s lack of enthusiasm for 
pictures almost a damning fault. Ladies’ sketch-books are gently 
ridiculed by Scott: “ I could not help hinting that the cataracts 
delineated bore a singular resemblance to hay-cocks, and the 
rocks much correspondence to large old-fashioned cabinets with 
their folding-doors open.” ‘I would have you cultivate your 
talents for drawing. It will be a constant source of amusement 
and delight; and who knows... but it may hereafter be a 
resource against the inconveniences of adversity,” admonishes 
Charlotte Smith in Rural Walks. Charlotte was herself an 
artist, taught by George Smith of Chichester. ‘“ As for Charlotte 
Smith, her landscapes are perfect Claudes,” writes Mrs. Hervey 
to Beckford, “and I was not at all surprised to hear that her 
pencil equalled her pen.” 

Painting was far from being set aside as an amusement only 
for the more light-minded_ sex. Pope’s absorption in it, about 
1713, is well known. ‘ My eyes have so far got the better of 
my ears that I have at present no notion of any harmony be- 
sides that of colours,” he writes to Caryll. The paintings he 
describes himself as doing are portraits or figure pieces; but he 
“stole some strokes,” Spence says, in a landscape of Tilleman’s. 
His Epistle to Mr, Jervas implies Italian landscape: 


g2 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Together o’er the Alps methinks we fly, 

Fir’d with ideas of fair Italy. 

With thee, on Raphael’s Monument I mourn, 
Or wait inspiring Dreams on Maro’s Urn: 
With thee repose, where Tully once was laid, 
Or seek some Ruin’s formidable shade: 


but its dying fall is of portrait, 


Alas! how little from the grave we claim! 
Thou but preserv’st a Face, and I a Name. 


Bishop Berkeley encouraged his wife and children to paint, and 
sent a portrait of his wife’s work to a friend, in 1746, remark- 
ing that two or three families in the neighbourhood are “ bent 
on painting; and I wish it were more general among the ladies 
and idle people, as a thing that may divert the spleen, improve 
the manufactures, and increase the wealth of the nation.” Mr. 
Robinson, father of Mrs. Montagu, was a landscape painter, 
“‘ excelling most of the professed artists of his day.” 

Painting was attractive to men of letters. Shenstone left a 
manuscript note-book with many pages of water-colour painting, 
‘awkward little pictures of groves, streams, cascades, lakes, vistas 
of blue hills, and ruins.1® Sterne, according to his friend Croft, 
had fits of enthusiasm for art. ‘‘ He chiefly copied Portraits. 
He had a good idea of Drawing, but not the least of mixing his 
colours.” Cradock in early life “ took great pleasure in making 
hasty sketches of picturesque situations.” Cowper set to work 
in 1780 with India ink and brushes (‘as far as a few shillings. 
I do not think my talent in art worth more”). He was seized 
for a time by a passion for landscape. (“ It is a most amusing 
art, and like every other art, requires much practice and atten- 
tion”): “I draw mountains, valleys, woods and streams, and 
ducks and dab-chicks. I admire them myself, and Mrs. Unwin 
admires them.” Arthur Young, economist, agriculturist, and 
lover of the picturesque, was himself something of an artist, and 
illustrated his Tour of the North with cascades and other scenes ; 
he had, like most of his contemporaries, a special weakness for 
cascades, fostered manifestly by Gaspar Poussin. With George 


18 Now in the Alice Freeman Palmer Collection at Wellesley. It is de- 
scribed by Alice Hazeltine in her Study of Shenstone, 1918. 


“ITALIAN LIGHT ON ENGLISH WALLS” 93 


Keate, and William Hayley, painting was an interest at least 
almost equal with letters; and for Humphrey Repton, essayist 
and gardener, a part of his profession. Walter Scott felt apology 
necessary for his deficiencies in art. He took lessons in youth 
“from a little Jew animalcule—a smouch called Burrell —a 
clever sensible creature, though. But I could make no progress 
either in painting or drawing.” ‘“ Even the humble ambition 
which I long cherished, of making sketches of those places which 
interested me, from a default of eye or hand, was totally ineffec- 
tive. After long study and many efforts, I was unable to apply 
the elements of perspective or of shade to the scene before me, 
and was obliged to relinquish in despair an art which I was 
most anxious to practise.” 

Never was the amateur’s lot happier than in the eighteenth 
century. His achievements were applauded by kind friends be- 
yond the bounds of reason. There was Mr. Taylor of Bath, 
whose performances Matthew Bramble admires extravagantly. 
“I must own I am no judge of painting, though very fond of 
pictures,” he prefaces his criticism upon Mr. T. “ If I am not 
totally devoid of taste, ... this young gentleman of Bath is 
the best landscape painter now living. ... His trees not only 
have richness of foliage and warmth of colour, which delights 
the view; but also a certain magnificence in the disposition, 
and spirit in the expression, which I cannot describe. His 
management of the chiaro oscuro, or light and shadow, especially 
gleams of sunshine, is altogether wonderful, both in contrivance 
and execution; and he is so happy in his perspective, and mark- 
ing his distances at sea, by a progressive series of ships, vessels, 
capes, and promontories, that I could not help thinking I had a 
distant view of thirty leagues up the background of the picture.” 
This fervent admiration of the amateur brings to mind the Mr. 
Taverner, a proctor in the Commons, who painted landscapes 
for his amusement, and “ was extolled above all professional 
artists,” says Farington. ‘ Taverner had much quaiking about 
shewing his pictures, which raised their reputation. It was very 
difficult to get a sight of his pictures.” Walpole mentions two of 
them which “ must be mistaken for, and are worthy of Gaspar 
Poussin.” Another well-advertised amateur was C. W. Bamp- 
field, also a famous improver of grounds and creator of cascades. 


94 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Richard Graves, his friend and admirer, pays him an Addisonian 
tribute: | 

In B-mpf-d’s pencil we delighted trace 

Salvator’s wildness but with heighten’d grace: 


Hence rocks and waves a pleasing landskip form; 
We’re charm’d with whirlwinds, and enjoy the storm.9 


Gainsborough’s friend, William Jackson of Exeter, notices, in 
The Four Ages (1798) the tendency of the amateur to copy 
Claude. “ It is the first effort of every smatterer in landscape 
painting.” W.H. Pyne in the Somerset House Gazette regrets 
that the Liber Veritatis is so often recommended to amateurs 
“by learned connoisseurs, as an example of light, shadow, and 
composition. It has moreover been resorted to, and that most 
erroneously, by certain teachers of drawing, as a store for sub- 
jects to lay before their pupils.” Claude direct, and Claude 
through Thomson, were likely to be in the amateur’s mind. “ I 
was just going to read the Seasons . . . to give him hints for a 
landscape,” says a father who is supervising his son’s artistic 
employment.?° A poem on Landscape Painting by the Reverend 
Samuel Bishop gives the formula: 


Let next in order due succeed 
The mingled hues of vale and mead; 
The road in devious windings wrought, 
Now lost, and now at distance caught; 
Whose broken track directs us still 
To some brisk streamlet’s glassy rill; 
Whence lessening in progressive guise, 
Long levels stretch, abrupt rocks rise, 
Till Light’s last lines the view complete, 
And woods, skies, plains and mountains meet. 
19 Kuphrosyne, I, 120. 
20 The Prater, second ed., 1757, p. 150. 





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V 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 
OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


I 


An extended rolling plain, or wide valley opening to the - 
south, traversed by a winding stream, and encircled, amphi- 
theatre-like, by wooded hills; a foreground of plants and trees, 
richly leaved; a middle distance of plain and hill, adorned with 
groves, villas, bridges, castles, temples of antique pattern, vine- 
hung ruins; a far distance of faint blue hills, and often the sea; 
all this overspread with golden light, preferably of sunrise or 
sunset: such was the familiar Claudian landscape. The Sal- 
vatorial showed precipices and great rock masses of fantastic 
form, cascades, torrents, desolate ruins, caves, trees dense of 
growth, or blasted trunks, and shattered boughs. The two 
kinds of landscape were combined by later artists, such as Vernet 
and Zuccarelli, or used in contrast, as by Mrs. Radcliffe. 
Throughout the century a literary landscape was formed, gen- 
erally, on these models: extended prospect, variety of objects, 
amphitheatre form, sunset and sunrise light; or cliffs, cascades, 
hanging woods, torrents, “ delightful horrors.” Not until late 
was the beauty of quiet and gentle scenery generally recognized, 
or indeed, in literature, recognized at all.? 

The word prospect seems at first to have been used to express 
some such wide and far-stretching scene, viewed from a height, 
and considered as forming a picture much like those of Claude. 
There came to be a differentiation between prospect and land- 
scape, which apparently was not felt early in the century. Shen- 
stone said: “ I use the words landskip or prospect, the former as 
expressive of home scenes, the latter of distant images. Pros- 

1 From letters it is evident that such beauty was recognized; Gold- 
smith and Cowper are the most conspicuous early appreciators of such 
scenery. Gainsborough’s landscapes are other examples; but even he resorts 


to theatric tricks, such as dead trees. 
Certain poets and poetasters are discussed in the later pe on gardening. 


95 


96 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


pects should take in the blue distant hills; but never so re- 
motely, that they are not distinguishable from clouds... . 
Landskip should contain variety enough to form a picture upon 
canvas.’ With more interest in the arts of landscape, in paint- 
ing and gardening, a technical language developed, which Gilpin, 
Arthur Young, Hutchinson, and others of the last half of the 
century used fluently. With them landscape means about what 
Shenstone meant by it, a more unified, less vast, paintable scene, 
though often still extensive, and prospect a view from a height, 
too vast for the canvas. 

Dyer and Thomson were the first of the great landscape de- 
signers in poetry, in their century. A few intimations appear 
before them, the clearest by John Hughes, who was, like many 
another poet, himself a dabbler in graphic arts. His Court of 
Neptune (1700) tells of 


Landscapes of rising Mountains, shaggy Woods, 
Green Valleys, smiling Meadows, silver Floods, 
And Plains with lowing Herds enrich’d around... . 


and in his verses To Mr. Constantine, on His Paintings, he 
describes painted landscape: 


Here tufted Groves rise boldly to the Sky, 

There spacious Lawns more distant charm the Eye, 
The Chrystal Lakes in borrow’d Tinctures shine, 

And misty Hills the far Horizon join, 

Lost in the azure Borders of the Day, 

Like Sounds remote that die in Air away. 


He has a view of the ruins of Rome, “ Old Temples, open to the 
Day,” which, with walls moss-grown, and broken columns, 
“Rear up their Roof-less Heads to form the various Scene,” * — 
characteristic expression of an age which constantly regarded 
nature as a stage set for man, or Nature personified as an artist 
working with pencil and palette. 

Tickell translates the native scenery into Italian, in a vague 
generalizing to which the Claudian landscape easily led. In- 
deed, we may well believe that to this generalizing in eighteenth 

2 Poems, 1735, II, 300. Hughes compares the descriptions of morning in 


the poets to “so many fine skies differently colour’d and interpers’d with 
Clouds, by the best Masters in Landskip.” I, 331. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 97 


century descriptions of landscape, as in Tickell’s Oxford (1707), 
their favourite pictures were conducive: 


. . . Wheresoe’er I turn my wond’ring Eyes, 
Aspiring Tow’rs and verdant Groves arise, 
Immortal Greens the smiling Plains array, 
And mazy Rivers murmur all the way. 


Pope comes close to Claude in The Temple of Fame (1711): 


Here sailing Ships delight the wondering eyes, 
There trees and intermingled temples rise: 

Now a clear sun the smiling scene displays, 

The transient landscape now in clouds decays, 


and in Windsor Forest (1713), ‘“‘ Where order in variety we see’: 


Here waving groves a chequer’d scene display, .. . 
There, interspers’d in lawns and opening glades, 

Thin trees arise that shun each other’s shades. 

Here in full light the russet plains extend, 

There, rapt in clouds, the blueish hills ascend.® 


The elder Thomas Warton shows some signs of the taste for 
painting and for scenery which developed more fully in his sons. 
His Poems on Several Occasions (1748) hint of his seeing 
“Nature’s Landscapes ” with a picturesque eye: “ Dark woods 
and pensive Waterfalls,’ “ desert Prospects rough and rude,” 
“a green Valley’s wood-encircled Side.” He admires more arts 
than one, as a gentleman of his time should do: 


Then Harmony and Picture came, 

Twin nymphs my Sense to entertain, 

By times my Eye, my Ear was caught 
With Raphael’s Stroke and Handel’s strain. 


His Ode to Taste classically addresses that “ beauteous Queen 
of Life-refining Art ” ; | 


Or in some ruin’d temple dost thou dwell, 
Of ancient Rome, deserted of the world, 
Where prostrate lies in Dust 

The shapely Column’s height? 


3 Salvator is suggested in ‘The shapeless rock, or hanging precipice.” 
Essay on Criticism, I, 1. 158. 


98 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


In 1726 Richard Savage published the Miscellaneous Poems 
and Translations which included preliminary sketches of Grongar 
Hill, and the poem in its final form appeared in D. Lewis’s Mis- 
cellaneous Poems, that same year. Dyer is so much more a 
painter of landscape in these poems than is Thomson in Winter, 
also published in 1726, that he may be taken as the pioneer of 
descriptive poets of landscape. He was a painter of both por- 
traits and landscapes, a pupil of Richardson’s, and in 1726 was 
rambling about south Wales and the neighbouring counties, 
painting not only with brush but with words “ Rural Scenes in 
simple Grandeur,” as Savage says, in which “ Vales, Hills, Lawns, 
Lakes, and Vineyards feast our eyes.” * In The Country Walk 
Dyer gives his own idea of landscape: 


Where am I, Nature? I descry 

Thy Magazine before me lie! 

Temples! —and Towns! —and Tow’rs! —and Woods! 
And Hills! —and Vales!—and Fields!—and Floods! 
Crowding before me, edg’d around 

With naked wilds, and barren Ground. 


The earlier Grongar Hill is in couplets and quatrains of irregu- 
lar length, and cumbrous style; the landscapes less effectively 
described than in the revision.® 

Another poem in Savage’s miscellany is Dyer’s Epistle to a 
Famous Painter, which gathers together the ideals of that age 
for landscape painting: 


4 Poems, 1726, p. 28. To Mr. John Dyer, a Painter. “I have often 
heard Sir George Beaumont express a curiosity about his pictures, and a 
wish to see any specimen that might survive,” says Wordsworth. 

5 Brief parallel passages show Dyer’s improvement: 


The qtick’ning Sun a Show’ry Ra- Half his beams Apollo sheds 
diance sheds, 

And lights up all the Mountain’s On the yellow mountain-heads! 
russet Heads. 

Gilds the fair Fleeces of the distant Gilds the fleeces of the flocks: 
Flocks, 

And, glittering, plays betwixt the And glitters on the broken rocks! 
broken Rocks. 


See The Two Versions of Grongar Hill, by Garland Greever, Jour. Eng. 
and Ger. Phil., xvi, 274-281. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 99 


The beauteous Shapes of Objects near! 

Or distant Groves confused in Air! 

The golden Eve, or blushing Dawn, 

Smiling on the lovely Lawn! 

And pleasing Views of chequer’d Glades! 

And Rivers, winding thro’ the Shades! 

And Groups of merry Nymphs and Swains! .. . 
Or some old Building, hid with Grass, 

Rearing its sad ruin’d Face; 


Whose Columns, Friezes, Statues lie, 
The Grief, and Wonder of the Eye! 
Or swift adown a Mountain tall, 

A foamy Cataract’s sounding Fall... . 


Grongar Hill is not composed in one single picture,® but pre- 
sents Claude’s wide country outspread, river, woods, and hills. 
“Old castles from the cliffs arise,” and above all there is abun- 
dance for the eye, and golden light: 


Ever charming, ever new, 
When will the landskip tire the view! 
The fountain’s fall, the river’s flow, 
The woody vallies, warm and low, 
The windy summits, wild and high, 
Roughly rushing on the sky! 
The pleasant seat, the ruin’d tow’r, 
The naked rock, the shady bow’; 
The town, the village, dome and farm... 
See on the mountain’s southern side, 
Where the prospect opens wide, 
Where the evening gilds the tide... . 


There is also, what Claude sometimes had, and this age felt 
desirable, moral; later we shall find moral brought into land- 
scape gardening less gracefully than Dyer’s reflection on the 
ruined tower: 


A little rule, a little sway, 
A sun beam in a winter’s day, 


6 Gilpin, in his Observations on the River Wye, criticizes it adversely for 
failing to contrast foreground and distance. ‘ His hill’s extensive view would 
probably have afforded several completed landscapes, but it is not clear that 
he aimed at producing any.” John Scott, Critical Essays, 1785, p. 112. 


100 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Is all the proud and mighty have 
Between the cradle and the grave... 
And see the rivers, how they run, 
Thro’ woods and meads, in shade and sun, 
Sometimes swift, sometimes slow, 
Wave -succeeding wave, they go 
A various journey to the deep, 
Like human life to endless sleep. 


The Ruins of Rome (1740) shows the same reflective and 
didactic turn, but also a fine sense of pictorial values in “ Latium’s 
wide champain, forlorn and waste.” The images are present 
to the eye, not evoked from a printed page; but the memory 
of such pictures of Claude’s as Roman Edifices in Ruins is 
evident : 

... the rising sun 
Flames on the ruins in the purer air 
Tow’ring aloft, upon the glitt’ring plain, 
Like broken rocks, a vast circumference, 
Rent palaces, crush’d columns, rifled moles, 
Fanes roll’d on fanes, and tombs on buried tombs. . . . 


. . . Globose and huge, 
Grey-mould’ring temples swell, and wide o’ercast 
The solitary landskip, hills and woods, 

And boundless wilds. . . . 


Hence over airy plains, by crystal founts, 

That weave their glitt’ring waves with tuneful lapse... . 
And dells, and mould’ring shrines, with old decay 

Rustick and green and wide embow’ring shades... . 

.. . From yon blue hills 

Dim in the clouds, the radiant aqueducts 

Turn their innumerable arches o’er 

The spacious desert, bright’ning in the sun... 

Proud and more proud in their august approach... . 


The Fleece (1757), in which Wordsworth found “ beauties of 
a high order,” was written after Dyer had given up his dream 
of being a painter, and had settled down as a country rector in 
Lincolnshire. ‘Tis now precipitated to the press, with such 
faults, as must be imputed to the air of a fenny country,” he 
writes to Duncombe, just before it was published. For such 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 101 


passages of landscape as it contains, he goes back to Wales and 
Shropshire, ignoring the “ fenny ” country, and recalls 


. . . snowden, for its lofty terrace fam’d, 
Which from a mountain’s ridge, elate o’er woods, 
) And girt with all Siluria sees around 
Regions on regions blended in the clouds, 
Pleasant Siluria, land of various views, 
Hills, rivers, woods, and lawns, and purple groves... . 


or Bredon with 


. various views unnumber’d spread beneath! 
Woods, tow’rs, vales, caves, dells, cliffs, & torrent floods; 
And here & there, between the spiry rocks, 
The broad flat sea... 


or Salvatorial Usk, 


. . . that frequent, among hoary rocks, 
On her deep waters paints th’ impending scenes, 
Wild torrents, craggs, & woods, & mountain snows. .. .? 


Richard Savage, who, according to Dr. Johnson, “had no 
knowledge but from pastorals and songs” of the country, may 
have been influenced by Dyer. For a city poet he takes rather 
marked interest in landscape. But The Wanderer leans toward 
Salvator, with its cataracts, and “ rocks in rough assemblage,” 
in amphitheatre form; and there is a “distance” where the 
ocean “‘ Points a blue arm where sailing ships delight, In Prospect 
lessen’d,” and a sunset, and a ruined circular temple, through 
whose arch the sun shines. 

Thomson is, par excellence, the poet of pictorial landscape. 
Yet his Winter (1726) shows slight use of it, in comparison with 
the other Seasons. The subject gives fewer chances for land- 
scape of the Italian kind; though there is one such: 


At last the Muddy Deluge pours along, 
Resistless, roaring; dreadful, down it comes 
From the chapt Mountain, and the mossy Wild, 


7 The Critical treats the poem as a picture: “In this agreeable landscape 
we perceive that the objects are properly placed, the figures well grouped, 
and the ordonnance of the piece just and natural. The colours are excellent, 
the strokes masterly, and the whole picture highly finished.” Criticism in 
such terms could not have been conceived in 1726. 


102 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Tumbling thro’ Rocks abrupt... . 

Betwixt two meeting Hills, it bursts away, 

Where Rocks, and Woods o’er hang the turbid Stream, 
There gathering triple Force, rapid, and deep, 

It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders thro! 


But the far more abundant later use of landscape implies that 
Thomson had both grown more interested in making pictures, 
and had better learned the technique of the art, after that 
first venture. Perhaps his friend Dyer’s miscellany poems had 
helped to suggest it; more likely the sight of pictures in the 
houses of his friends and patrons. The Prince of Wales (him- 
self a pupil of Goupy) was a collector of landscape paintings, 
and the gentlemen of his circle were largely men of taste. The 
Countess of Hertford, one of Thomson’s important patrons, was 
not only a lover of pictures, but proficient in painting landscapes 
from prints, if we may believe her friend Mrs. Rowe. Thomson’s 
friend, the painter, Aikman, had been in Italy three years a 
while before, and if he did not return with a sheaf of prints 
and drawings, was the exception among painters of his time. 

In the second edition of Winter Thomson inserted another 
Salvatorial bit, — 

... the cloudy Alps, and Appenine 


Capt with grey mists, and everlasting snows; 
Where nature in stupendous ruin lies... . 


But in Summer (1727) there is a gallery of paintings, — 
Claudian sunrises and sunsets, extended views, pastoral scenes: 


... Young Day pours in a-pace, 
And opens all the lawny Prospect wide. 
The dripping Rock, the Mountain’s misty Top 
Swell on the Eye, and brighten with the Dawn. . 


But yonder comes the powerful Kimg of Day, 

Rejoicing in the East. The lessening Cloud, 

The kindling Azure, and the Mountain’s Brim, 

Tipt with aethereal Gold, his near Approach 

Betoken glad: and now apparent all, 

Aslant the Dew-bright Earth, and colour’d Air, 

He looks, in boundless Majesty, abroad; 

And sheds the shining Day, that, burnish’d, plays 

On Rocks, and Hills, and Towers, and wandering Streams, 
High-gleaming from afar... 














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A DEsIGn By WILLIAM KENT FoR The Seasons, 1730. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 103 


And what a pleasing Prospect lies around! 

Of Hills, and Vales, and Woods, and Lawns, and Spires 
And Towns betwixt, and gilded Streams! till all 

The stretching Landskip into Smoak decays... . 


Low walks the Sun, and broadens by degrees, 
\Just o’er the Verge of Day.... 

’Tis all one Blush from East to West! and now 
Behind the dusky Earth, He dips his Orb, 

Now half immers’d, and now a golden Curve, 

Gives one faint Glimmer, and then disappears... . 


While wavering Woods, and Villages, and Streams, 
And Rocks, and Mountain-tops, that long retain’d, 
Th’ ascending Gleam, are all one swimming Scene, 
Doubtful if seen... . 


Others might be given; the group of cattle by the brook, 
the waterfall, the sea that “in long Visto ... Darts a green 
Lustre, trembling, thro’ the Trees,” the mountain-pine “ Black 
from the Stroak ... a leaning shatter’d Trunk,” the precipice 
“Projecting Horror on the blacken’d Flood.” ‘The wide pros- 
pect swells into views too vast for a canvas in some passages 
added in 1744: 


Majestic Woods of every vigorous Green 

Stage above Stage, high waving o’er the Hills 
Or to the far Horizon wide diffus’d, 

A boundless deep Immensity of Shade. . 


. .. Plains immense 
Lie stretch’d below, interminable Meads, 
And vast Savannahs, where the wandering Eye 
Unfixt, is in a verdant Ocean lost... . 


In Spring (1728), dedicated to the Countess of Hertford, the 
poet views himself as a painter, vainly attempting to seize living 
beauty; “ Daubing all Will be to what I gaze; for who can 
paint Like Nature?” But he attempts a sunset after rain: 


Till, in the Western Sky, the downward Sun 
Looks out illustrious from amid the Flush 

Of broken Clouds, gay-shifting to his Beam. 

The rapid Radiance instantaneous strikes 

Th’ illumin’d Mountain, thro’ the Forest streams, 


104 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Shakes on the Floods, and in a yellow Mist, 

Far-smoaking o’er th’ interminable Plain, 

In twinkling Myriads lights the dewy Gems. 

Moist, bright, and Green, the Landskip laughs around. 


... Lhe hurried Eye... 
Now meets the bending Sky, the River now 
Dimpling along, the breezy ruffled Lake, 
The Forest-running road, the rising Spire, 
Th’ aetherial Mountain, and the distant Main. 


In the edition of 1744—that is, after his visit to Italy and 
his collecting of prints— appears the most elaborately com- 
posed of all his landscapes, with real Claudian distances. It is 
the view from Hagley Park: 


Meantime you gain the Height, from whose fair Brow 
The bursting Prospect spreads immense around; 

And snatch’d o’er Hill and Dale, and Wood, and Lawn 
And verdant Field, and darkening Heath between, 
And Villages embosom’d soft in Trees, 

And spiry Towns by dusky Columns mark’d 

Of rising Smoak, your Eye excursive roams... . 

To where the broken Landskip, by degrees, 
Ascending, roughens into ridgy Hills; 

O’er which the Cambrian Mountains, like far Clouds 
That skirt the blue Horizon, doubtful, rise. 


In Autumn (1730) the landscapes are well constructed, but 
less Italian; though they show “a serener blue with golden 
light irradiate,” a “ boundless prospect,” a “ mountain, horrid, 
vast, sublime,” and one great pictorial map, a “ broad cerulean 
scene,” of 

. . . CALEDONIA, in romantic view; 
Her airy mountains, from the gelid main, 
Invested with a keen, diffusive sky, 

. . . her forests huge, 
Incult, robust, and tall, ... 

. . . her azure lakes between, .. . 
. . . Winding deep, and green, her fertile vales; 
With many a cool, translucent, brimming flood 
Wash’d lovely. .. . 


In 1730 Thomson, making the grand tour with young Talbot, 
developed into something of a virtuoso; at least he acquired 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 105 


ideas on painting, which he sets down in Liberty. He is oddly 
backward in decorating his heavy subject with pictures from 
his travels. Those he gives are such as he might almost have 
given without seeing the places, — brief and general beside Dyer’s. 


In Umbria’s closing Vales, or on the Brow 
Of her brown Hills that breathe the scented Gales... 
Or Baia’s viny coast... 
Far-shining upwards to the Sabine Hills ... 

. . . The rugged Appenines that roll 
Far thro’ /talian bounds their wavy tops... 
The hollow-winding Stream, the Vale, fair-spread 
Amid an Amphitheatre of Hills... 
. . . Hung o’er amazing Rocks, 
The Mountain-Ash, and solemn-sounding Pine. .. . 
And high o’ertopping all the broken Scene, 
The Mountain fading into Sky... . 


His interest in painting is shown by his giving twice over an 
account of its derivation: 


First elder Sculpture taught her Sister Art 

Correct Design; where great Ideas shone... . 

Then the bright Muse, their eldest Sister, came; 

And bad her follow where She led the Way: 

Bad Earth, and Sea, and Air, in Colours rise; 

And copious Action on the Canvas glow: 

Gave her gay Fable; spread Invention’s store; 
Inlarg’d her View; taught Composition high, 

And just Arrangement, circling round one Point, 

That starts to Sight, binds and commands the Whole.® 


One picture which he gives is a Claude: 


As when the Shepherd, on the Mountain Brow, 
Sits piping to his Flocks, and gamesome Kids; 
Mean time the Sun, beneath the green Earth sunk, 
Slants upward o’er the Scene a parting Gleam: 
Short is the Glory that the Mountain gilds, 

Plays on the glittering Flocks, and glads the Swain. 


In the edition of 1744 he added to his story of the arts a 
passage upon landscape painting, vividly suggesting visits to 
the various Roman Palaces which held the assembled works 
of Claude, Salvator, and the Poussins: 


8 Greece, 1735, Pp. 31. See also Britain, 1736, pp. 15-17. 


106 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


> Waitos Rural sire 
The softer canvas oft repos’d the Soul. 
There gayly broke the Sun-illumin’d Cloud; 
The less’ning Prospect, and the Mountain blue, 
Vanish’d in Air; the Precipice frown’d, dire; 
White, down the Rock, the rushing Torrent dash’d; 
The Sun shone, trembling, o’er the distant Main; 
The Tempest foam’d, immense; the driving Storm 
Sadden’d the Skies, and from the doubling Gloom, 
On the scath’d Oak the ragged Lightning fell; 
In closing Shades, and where the Current strays, 
With Peace, and Love, and Innocence around, 
Pip’d the lone Shepherd to his feeding Flock... . 


In his account of the arts engraving has a place; and we 
recall his collection of prints: 


From Rome, awhile, how PAINTING, courted long, 
With Poussin came; Ancient Design, that lifts 

A fairer Front, and looks another Soul. 

How the kind Art, that, of unvalu’d Price, 

The fam’d and only Picture, easy gives, 

Refin’d her Touch, and thro’ the shadow’d Piece, 
All the live Spirit of the Painter pour’d. 


The Castle of Indolence (1748) is rich in bits of landscape 
sometimes rather vaguely given, as accords with that dreamy 
poem: 


In lowly Dale, fast by a River’s Side, 
With woody Hill o’er Hill encompass’d round, .. . 


“ Sleep-soothing Groves and quiet Lawns between,” “ Lowing 
Herds along the Vale. ... And vacant Shepherds piping in 
the Dale,” a Castle ‘mid embow’ring Trees,” ‘“ Gay Plains,” 
woods that “imbrown the Steep, or wave along the Shore,” 
“trees by Lightning scath’d.” Of the larger pictures, one is a 
Salvator, one a Claude: 


Full in the Passage of the Vale, above 

A sable, silent, solemn Forest stood... . 

And up the Hills, on either Side, a Wood 

Of blackening Pines, ay waving to and fro, 

Sent forth a sleepy Horror through the Blood; 

And where the Valley winded out below, 

The murmuring Main was heard, and scarcely heard, to flow. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 107 


.. . That fatal valley gay, 
O’er which high wood-crown’d hills their summits rear... 
Like a green isle, it broad beneath them spread, 
With gardens round, and wandering currents clear, 
And tufted groves to shade the meadow-bed. .. . 


If for sixty or seventy years to come Claude is soft, Salvator 
dashes, and Poussin is learned, the responsibility is Thomson’s. 
That stanza of his on landscape painting was a handy compen- 
dium of criticism for the general public: 


Sometimes the Pencil in cool airy Halls 

Bade the gay Bloom of vernal Landskips rise, 

Or Autumn’s varied Shades imbrown the Walls: 
Now the black Tempest strikes the astonish’d Eyes; 
Now down the Steep the flashing Torrent flies; 

The trembling Sun now plays o’er Ocean blue, 

And now rude Mountains frown amid the Skies; 
Whate’er Lorrain light-touch’d with softening Hue, 
Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew. 


To those three he adds one more, 


No Titian’s Pencil e’er could so array, 
So fleece with Clouds the pure Etherial Space! 


He would doubtless have been pleased to find himself compared 
to these four. “ It has been affirmed in my hearing,” says his 
critic More (whose adjectives here are not too discriminating), 
“by some whose profession and science give them a right to 
speak decisively, that the pieces of Poussin are not more un- 
common, exotic and classical, the sketches of Lorenese more dar- 
ing and sublime, or the descriptions of Titian more happy, 
natural, graceful, varied and charming, than his.” And again, 
“The scenes of Thomson are frequently as wild and romantic 
as those of Salvator Rosa, varied with precipices and torrents, 
and ‘ castled cliffs,’ and deep vallies with piny mountains, and 
the gloomiest caverns.” ® “The Seasons of Thomson,” says 


9 J. More, Strictures, Critical and Sentimental, on Thomson’s Seasons, 
1777, pp. 180, 182. The second sentence (quoted by More) is from Joseph 
Warton’s Essay on Pope. Another writer of the same time objects to Thom- 
son’s painting as too realistic and harsh: “ Had Art But soften’d the hard lines 
and mellow’d down The glaring tints.” ... (A Poetical Epistle, ... (W. H. 
Roberts], 1773, pp. 8-9. 


108 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Joseph Warton, “ have been very instrumental in diffusing a 
general taste for the beauties of mature and landschape.”’ 1° 

Occasional descriptions of stage scenery in this period re- 
mind us that among the scene-painters were such imitators of — 
Claude as George Lambert and Joseph Goupy. Perhaps that 
for the epilogue of Tancred was of such creation. ‘“ The back 
scene opens, and discovers a romantic Sylvan landskip; from 
which Mrs. Cibber, in the character of the Tragic Muse, ad- 
vances slowly to music.” The epilogue to Alfred (revised by 
Mallet and twice presented in the grounds of the Prince of 
Wales at Cliefden) shows “a beautiful valley, bordered on each 
hand by forest trees, rising irregularly; and forming from space 
to space, various groves. The prospect behind is a landschape 
of woodlands, and of mountains that ascend one above another, 
till the last seem to lose themselves in the sky. From the 
summit of the nearest hill a river pours down, by several falls, 
in a natural cascade.” 

While Thomson was writing Summer, Mallet, tutor to the 
sons of the Duke of Monstrose, was engaged on The Excursion, 
in which Thomson and Aikman expressed great interest. He 
went on the grand tour with his young pupils in 1727; but the 
pictures in his poems are more like pale reflexes of Dyer’s and 
Thomson’s than like anything caught in Italy: 

There spreads a green expanse of plains .. . 
And there, at utmost stretch of eye, 
A mountain fades into the sky; 


While winding round, diffused and deep, 
A river rowls with sounding sweep... . 


The boundless scene beneath, hill, dale and plains; 
The precipice abrupt, the distant deep... . 

The river’s crystal, and the meadow’s green, 
Grateful diversity! allure the eye... . 


. . . how the sun 

Declin’d, hangs verging on the western main... 
A circling glory glows around his disk 

Of milder beams; part, streaming o’er the sky, 
Inflames the distant azure; part below 

In level lines shoots through the waving wood, 
Clad half in light and half in pleasing shade, 
That lengthens o’er the lawn. . 


10 Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 1782, II, 185. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 109 


Extent and amount of prospect were the main things with 
most of the poets who deal with landscape in this century. 
At just about this time Bridgeman’s invention of the ha-ha, 
or fence concealed in a ditch, was beginning to “call in the 
country.” For the enumeration of objects so frequently appear- 
ing, Milton was partly responsible,'! just as he was accounted 
the true father of the English school of gardening. But when 
John Duncombe styled Milton “the great artist,’ and admired 
the “ lively tints” with which he drew “ Hill, dale, and shady 
woods, and sunny plains” (using Milton’s own phrase) he 
showed how the idea of the painted landscape dominated his 
age. References to the painter’s tools and the painter’s art were 
the poetic convention in descriptions of landscape. ‘“ Land- 
scapes rise, scarce Lamberi’s art can mend,’— so Whitehead ; 


Nature the Pallat holds, the Canvas spread, 
Filled with her colours, Art the Pencil guides, 


says the author of The Landscape (1748), a poem in elegiac 
quatrains antedating Gray’s published Elegy by three years. 
Young, in a Berkleian vein, reflects that our eyes 


. . . half create the wondrous World they see... . 
Ours is the Cloth, the Pencil and the Paint; 
Which Nature’s admirable Picture draws. 


Young has little landscape description; in one scene cities swell 
over vales and mountains, “ And gild our Landschape with their 
glittering Spires.” His idea of the use of nature is seen in his 
list of sublimities: 


Seas, Rivers, Mountains, Forests, Deserts, Rocks, 
The Promontory’s Height, the Depth profound, 
Of subterranean, excavated Grots... 

Ev’n these an aggrandizing Impulse give; 

Of solemn Thought enthusiastic Heights 

Ev’n These infuse... . 


Such a Miltonic list is Henry Brooke’s, in Universal Beauty 
(1735): 


11 E.g. Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, P. L. 
II, 621. Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, P. L. III, 28. Fortu- 
nate fields, and groves, and flow’ry vales, III, 569. Hill, dale, and shady 
woods, and sunny plains, VIII, 262. Of hill and valley, rivers, woods, and 
plains, IX, 116. 


110. ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


. . . Landskip, Hill and Dale, 
The lowly Sweetness of the Flow’ry Vale, 
The Mount elate, that rises in Delight, 
The flying Lawns, that wanton from the Sight, 
The steepy Mountains, and luxurious Plains, 
Delicious Regions! Plants, Woods, Waters, Shades, 
Grotts, Arbours, Flow’rets, Downs and rural Shades; 
Arcadian Groves, sweet Tempe! Blest Retreats. . 


The topographical landscape poem is frequent, imitating 
Cooper’s Hill and Windsor Forest, but with more use of picture, 
and, as the development of grounds become fashionable, glori- 
fying some improved estate. Often the pictures are consciously 
composed. Mrs. Elizabeth Thomas, in Bereford (1731), de- 
scribes a ‘large and varied Prospect” including ‘“ Towns, 
Churches, Mountains, Pleasure Fields and Woods, Enamel’d 
Meadows and transparent Floods,” and terminated by gently 
rising hills “ which close the Landscape with complete Delight.” 
John Whaley, writing of Tintern, shows a sense of “ Views Ro- 
mantic,’ — overhanging cliffs, sparkling brooks, gray ruins, 
thoughtfully gilded by a setting sun.1? Dr. John Dalton is an 
early poet of the Lakes, inadequate, as Thomas Amory com- 
plains in John Buncle. ‘ Tremendous rocks,” “ the rough rocks 
of dread Lodore,” “ the horrors of the scene,” “‘ Cragged cliffs, 
impendent wood, Whose shadows mix o’er half the flood,” are the 
best descriptive phrases Dalton finds. His poems are important 
for relish of wildness: 


Horrors like these at first alarm, 

But soon with savage grandeur charm, 

And raise to noblest thoughts the mind... 
A pleasing, tho’ an awful sight.1° 


“ Delightful Horrors, hail! ” sings John Cunningham, after a 
visit to Riponden, in Yorkshire. But the topographical poets 
belong more to landscape gardening than to poetry. 

Walpole and Gray, travelling to Italy in 1730, were properly 
struck with the Salvatorial landscape of the Grande Chartreuse. 
Walpole expressed himself in a letter to West; Gray in a Latin 
poem for the album of the monastery, to the Genius Loci: 


12 Poems and Translations, 1745, p. 208. 
13-1755, PP. 19-20. 


ih cane 


iy 





‘s}qosnypessep, ‘uojsog ‘sj1y aUIy Jo wWnesnyy 
‘AouNOg pue joaJOoM Aq poAevisua pue UOSTIM PAeyIY Aq poqyuleg 


“SNOSVAS AHL GNV OTIOdY 





ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 111 


Numen habet, veteresque sylvas. 
.. . Nativa nam certe fluenta 


Praesentiorem et conspicimus Deum 
Per invias rupes, fera per juga, 
Clivosque praeruptas, sonantes 
Inter aquas, nemorumque noctem. 


Except for the prospect from Windsor, “ th’ expanse below Of 
grove, of lawn, of mead” through which Thames “ wanders 
His silver-winding way,” it is Gray’s only elaborate land- 
scape in poetry, though his prose pictures of the Lakes were 
among the most famous of the second half of the century. 
Gilbert West shows the influence of Thomson, in his Canto 
in Imitation of Spenser (1739): 


. In Prospect wide 

A spacious Plain the false Enchanter show’d, 

With goodly Castles decked on every side, 

And silver Streams, that down the Champaign flow’d,.. 
And Groves of Myrtle; and the Lamp of Day 

His orient Beams display’d withouten Cloud, 

Which lightly on the glistening Waters play, 

And tinge the Castles, Woods, and Hills with purple Ray. 

So fair a Landscape charm’d the wond’ring Knight; 


and of Dyer, 


Now look, how vast a space the Eye 
Has journey’d ’thwart the ambient Sky, 
O’er grove & park & woody dale, 

Up the high hill & down the vale, 

Till we come round th’ Horizon wide, 
Back to where Thames fruitful tide 
Thro’ meadow, field & garden fair 
Winds its clear current.14 


Akenside in his Pleasures of the Imagination (1744) had earlier 
than Burke a theory of the sublime and beautiful; he first 
enumerates “ three sister-graces, whom the painter’s hand, The 
poet’s tongue confesses; the sublime, The wonderful, the fair,” 
and later contrasts the tastes for the vast and wild and for har- 
mony, grace, and beauty. Taste with him is “a discerning sense 


14 Correspondence of Gray, Walpole, West and Ashton. Ed. Paget-Toyn- 
bee, I, 192-194. 


112 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Of decent and sublime,” and in the revision of 1772 he names 
God as source “ of beauteous and sublime.” He likes to combine 
the two in his Thomsonian descriptions: 


For verdant valleys and surrounding trees, 

A solitary prospect, wide and wild, 

Rush’d on my senses. Iwas a horrid pile 
Of hills and many a shaggy forest mix’d, 
With many a sable cliff and glitt’ring stream. 
Aloft recumbent on the dusky ridge 

The brown woods wav’d ... 

. . . Now the western sun reveal’d 

Between two parting cliffs his golden orb, 
And pour’d across the shadow of the hills, 

On rocks and floods, a yellow stream of light, 
That chear’d the solemn scene. 


. . . Mark the sable woods 
That shade sublime yon mountain’s nodding brow; 
With what religious awe the solemn scene 
Commands your stop! ... 

. . . Behold th’ expanse 

Of yon gay landscape, where the silver clouds 
Flit o’er the heav’ns before the sprightly breeze; 
Now their grey cincture skirts the doubtful sun; 
Now streams of splendor, thro’ their opening veil 
Effulgent, sweep from off the gilded lawn 
Th’ aerial shadows. 


Collins, a poet more of ear than of eye, draws but few and 
slight landscapes: “ some cliff, to Heav’n up-pil’d,” “ some wild 
and heathy Scene,” “some Ruin ’midst its dreary Dells.” His 
one “ prospect ” is of 


.. . the Hut 
That from the Mountain’s Side, 
Views Wilds, and swelling Floods, 
And Hamlets brown, and dim-discover’d Spires. 


The second-rate poets abound in “scenes”. There is one 
in Lyttelton, “Of verdant meads and cultivated fields,” with 
winding stream, and “ various tufts of rising wood,” castle, 
cottage among trees, town in middle distance, and hills on 
far horizon. Beattie has plenty of prospects, sunrises, sunsets, 
lakes, long vales, craggy cliffs; and one large and elaborate com- 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 113 


position, enthusiastically admired by the reviewers of The 
Minstrel as being “ picturesque and romantic ”’: 


. . . Rocks on rocks pil’d, as by magick spell 

Fenced from the north and east this savage dell... 
Southward a mountain rose with easy swell, 

Whose long gay groves eternal murmur made; 

And toward the western sun a streamlet fell, 

Where, through the cliffs, the eye, remote, survey’d 

Blue hills, and glittering waves, and skies in gold array’d. 


The “ ingenious ” Dr. Brown, whose pessimistic Estimate “ rose 
like a paper-kite, and charm’d the town,” has suggestions of the 
pictorial in his Curse of Saul (1763): the mountain’s “ rock-en- 
cumber’d Head,” the torrent rolling “‘ down his steep and shaggy 
Side,” and winding ‘‘ smooth and clear, along the fertile Plain ” 
to the distant Sea; and a Claude-like sun that “ steals into the 
golden Deep.” 

The Wartons, as would be expected, show strong leanings 
toward the picturesque. Thomas Warton writes of “ daedal 
landscapes.” and “ sunny vales,” and gives one sunrise scene, a 
mingling of Milton, Dyer, and paintings, of ‘‘ Misty streams that 
wind below” “ Groves and castled cliffs . . . invested all in 
radiance clear.”*® The Odes (1747) of Joseph Warton offer 
several examples, chiefly Salvatorial. Such is the “ vast, various 
landscape”’ in the Ode to Fancy: 


Say, in what deep and pathless vale, 
Or on what hoary mountain’s side, 
A i falls of waters you reside, 
’Midst broken rocks, a rugged scene. 


The Ode to a Gentleman upon his Travels thro’ Italy abounds 
in Claude-like conventional images: rivers in mazy courses, 
ruined domes, mossy mouldering walls, storied temples, ‘‘ Parian 
seats of Attic art defac’d.” The park scene in New Market 
(1751) is pictorial: 


Here various trees compose a chequer’d scene, 
Glowing in gay diversities of green. 

There the full stream thro’ intermingling glades 
Shines a broad lake, or falls in deep cascades. 


15 Poems on Various Subjects, 1791, pp. 128, 210. 


114 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


The Enthusiast is full of scenery and of Thomson. In contrast 
to the artifices of Versailles are set 


. some pine-topt precipice, 
Abrupt and shaggy, whence a foaming stream, 
Like Anio, tumbling, roars; or some bleak heath, 
Where straggling stands the mournful juniper, 
Or yew-tree scath’d; while in clear prospect round, 
From the grove’s bosom spires emerge, and smoke 
In bluish wreaths ascends, ripe harvests wave, 
Low, lonely cottages and ruin’d tops 
Of Gothic battlements appear, and streams 
Beneath the sunbeams twinkle. 


The predilection of her sex for the Salvatorial is strong in 
Anna Laetitia Barbauld, whose Corsica (1773) has cascades, 
“Swelling mountains, brown with solemn shade,” lofty pines, 
spreading chestnut, 


. . . lonely scenes 
Of unquell’d nature: precipices huge, 
And tumbling torrents; trackless deserts, plains 
Fenced in with guardian rocks. 


Anna Seward found Dr. Darwin’s Botanic Garden abounding 
“in Claude and Salvatorial sketches’; but the reader of today 
is put to it to find many of them. It is of interest that Miss 
Seward, who, however much she seems a fool, does represent 
(partly for that reason) a large section of the reading public of 
her time, recognizes the likeness to painting. Dr. Darwin cer- 
tainly is composing his scenes with conscious art: 


. . . Grey precipices, and ivy’d towers, 
Long winding meads, and intermingled bowers, . . . 


So with long gaze admiring eyes behold 

The varied landscape all its lights unfold: 

High rocks opposing o’er the stream project 

Their naked bosoms, and the beams reflect; 

Wave high in air their fringed crests of wood, 

And checker’d shadows dance upon the flood; 

Green sloping lawns construct the sidelong scene, 
And. guide the sparkling rill that winds between... 
Dim hills behind in pomp aerial rise, 

Lift their blue tops, and melt into the skies. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY II5 


William Lisle Bowles sees landscape in this same manner, — 
as it carries out the art gallery. He seeks by preference 
for his Sonnets, written chiefly on picturesque spots (1789), grey 
battlements, forsaken towers, sunset light, “ romantick ” vales, 
rocks towering dark, rivers winding wild, castles gleaming on 
the distant shore. William Sotheby, making a poetic-picturesque 
Tour through Parts of Wales (1794), exclaims of the “ loud-echo- 
ing crags ” of Melincourt, 


Not bolder views Salvator’s pencil dash’d 
In Alpine wilds romantic, 


and at the view from Snowdon— vast and spreading — he in- 
vokes those who aspire 


to imitate the soft aerial hue 
That shades the living scene of chaste LorRAIN. 


2. 


The greater familiarity with painting which the author both 
had himself, and assumed in his audience, after the middle of 
the century, is reflected in the practice just illustrated of de- 
scribing landscape by means of the names of the artists. An 
early instance is found in Christopher Smart (who seems an un- 
likely subject for connoisseurship, yet who plainly relished pic- 
tures) apropos of the mimic landscapes which the virtuoso 
thought he could see in agate — “ all the living landskip of the 
vale”” — and drags in the admired Guido Reni, in a way which 
arouses suspicion that the names are not much more to him 
than names: | 

In vain thy pencil, Claudio, or Poussin, 
Or thine, immortal Guido, wou’d essay 
Such skill to imitate.1¢ 


The author of Verses Written in London on the Approach of 
Spring deals likewise with the futility of art: 


Can rich Loraine mix up the glowing paint 
Bright as Aurora? Can he form a shade 
To strike the fancy with a gloom so solemn 
As every thicket, copse, or secret grove 


16 On the Immensity of the Supreme Being, Second ed., 1753, p. 9. 


116 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


At twilight hour affords? Can savage Rosa 

With aught so wildly noble fill the mind, 

As where the ancient oak in the wood’s depth 

. . . deserted stands 

A barren trunk, while rude winds howl around... 
Such scenes awake Imagination’s powers 

To sacred thought; such Rosa cannot paint: 

’Tis his alone to show the shatter’d trunk. . . .17 


So does W. Williams, in An Essay on Halifax (1761): 


. .. the beauteous mass 
Ting’d with the sanguine beams of setting day, 
Gives a refulgent harmony divine, 
And far, Lorain, beyond thy mimic skill. 


Daniel Bellamy, in his Ethic Amusements ** describes the works 
of “ Painting’s glowing hand,” which 
. opens some ideal plain, 


On which, in all their bloom arise 
Perennial springs of Paradise, 


“Oh! for a Claude to sketch the scene! ” exclaims Richard 
Graves, describing a maiden fallen asleep by a spring.1® The 
native painters are joined with the classic masters: 


... I wish’d 
The skill of CLAUDE, or RUBENS, or of Him, 
Whom now on LorANnvt’s banks, in groves that breathe 
Enthusiasm sublime, the Sister Nymphs 
Inspire, 


says John Scott in Atmwell (1776), after he has spent some time 
in describing picturesque views, adding in a note: “ Mr. George 
Smith of Chichester, a justly celebrated Landschape Painter, 
and also a Poet.” 

The widely read letter of Dr. John Brown, on the beauties of 
the Lakes, with its use of the names of Claude, Salvator and 
Gaspar Poussin, had many echoes. Richard Cumberland in the 
preface of his Odes (1776) expresses pain that Gray was moved 


17 Pearch, II, 156. 

18 Among the illustrations to this work, revised by Bellamy’s son in 
1768, appears one which is an adaptation of a seaport of Claude. 

19 Euphrosyne, 1773, I, 38. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 117 


to nothing more than a prosaic description by “ this enchanting 
display of sublime and beautiful objects,” and goes on to con- 
sider and quote from Brown’s letter, and in one of the odes 
thus praises Ullswater : 


For neither Scottish Lomonn’s pride, 

Nor smooth KiILLARNEY’s silver tide, 

Nor aught that learned Poussin drew 

Or dashing Rosa flung upon my view 

Shall shake thy sovereign undisturbed right... . 


George Cumberland, who was or attempted to be, an artist 
himself, says in Lewina the Maid of Snowdon (1793), 


Words are but faint the image to pursue, 
SALVATOR’S pencil, here, had trembled too! 


— but goes on with a good many lines about rocks and cata- 
racts.2° Miss Seward uses the painters for scenes in her mind’s 
eye; when “ Poetic Fancy’s plastic rays” dart on her spirit 
with full force, 


Then scenes arise in intellectual hue 

Gay, soft, and warm, as Claude or Poussin drew... 
Or sternly if she leads the mental sight, 

Where Horror scowls, beneath incumbent night, 

With all Salvator’s savage dignity 

Scowl the dark, rugged rock, and lurid sky. 


And when she follows her friend Whalley’s tour, she fancies 
him seeing 


. . . rocks as bold as savage Rosa shows, 
And dales as soft a sunny Claude has gilt. 


Her own feeble landscapes are created remotely after these 
models. Samuel Rogers has the paintings more clearly in mind 
than she, when he writes in The Pleasures of Memory (1792): 


These noble scenes SALVATOR’S soul ador’d; 
The rocky pass half hung with shaggy wood, 
And the cleft oak flung boldly o’er the flood. 


20 The Odes are dedicated to Romney. He had another reference in 
A Poem on the Landscapes of Great Britain, written in 1780. 
Grand as Poussin, to whom ev’n Nature yields, 
And great as Rosa from CALABRIAN fields. 


118 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


A belated topographical poem, Richmond Hill (1807), is very 
expressive of the treatment of landscape for the fifty years 
preceding. The Thames at Richmond was a favourite scene, the 
richness of the trees, the serpentine river, and the expanse of 
view bearing some likeness to the Italian paintings. The vale, 
says the poet, is called Frascati by “ travelled bards.” He 
apostrophizes Thomson and praises Brown in familiar com- 
parison, 


A brighter, richer landscape lies display’d 
Then ever Poussin sketch’d, or Claude pourtray’d. 


2: 

Poets of more truly poetic quality do not beat out this old 
straw. Goldsmith, who in his essays makes slighting remarks 
on both connoisseurs and artists, sees ‘‘Campania’s plain ” with 
no illusions, as ‘“‘ A weary waste expanding to the skies.” And 
though he does “ Look downward where an hundred realms 
appear,” he gives no intimation of seeing the “ Lakes, forests, 
cities, plains extending wide ” as a pictorial landscape, though 
one reviewer calls his description of Italy ‘“ picturesque and har- 
monious.” He is nearer the picturesque in 


Woods over woods, in gay theatric pride; 
While oft some temple’s mould’ring tops between 
With venerable grandeur mark the scene. 


‘The canvas glow’d, beyond even nature warm”; but it is not 
the canvas (which a poverty-stricken wanderer might not easily 
visit in the palace where it hung) which makes him write 


There in the ruin, heedless of the dead, 
The shelter-seeking peasant builds his shed, 


nor does he view that object with the eye of a picturesque 
tourist. The graphic details in The Deserted Village are such as 
belong to Crome rather than to Claude; and Goldsmith sees in 
the rich man’s park chiefly “ a space that many poor supplied.” 
According to his sentiments about landscape gardening 


The country blooms —a garden and a grave. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN ENGLISH POETRY 119 


As for Cowper, the favorite poet of Constable, he dabbled in 
those little landscapes in India ink, about the merits of which 
he had no delusions. He did not like the grandiose and vast 
in landscape; even such an approach to it as Eartham, Hayley’s 
estate in Sussex, made him uneasy. The stormy sea “ Hoarsely 
and dangerously spoke ” to him of his lost treasures. When he 
cries for “a lodge in some vast wilderness,’ it means only a 
desire to escape the cruelty of civilization. His pictures are of 
“Ouse, slow winding through a level plain,” “ hedge-row beau- 
ties numberless,” “Green balks and furrow’d lands,” ‘“ Downs 
that almost escape th’ enquiring eye,” — 


Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily viewed, 

Please daily; 
though he grants that “ desultory man” may find pleasures for 
a time in “ forests, or the savage rock,” it is only to return more 
happily to “snug enclosures in the shelter’d vale.’ His view 
of the relation of nature and art, especially exotic art, is strik- 
ingly set down in The Task: 


... Strange! there should be found,... 
Who, satisfied with only pencil’d scenes, 
Prefer to the performance of a God 
Th’ inferior wonders of an artist’s hand! 
Lovely indeed the mimic works of art; 
But Nature’s works far lovelier. I admire — 
None more admires—the painter’s magic skill, 
Who shows me that which I shall never see, 
Conveys a distant country into mine, 
And throws Italian light on English walls: 
But imitative strokes can do no more 
Than please the eye, sweet Nature ev’ry sense. 


Burns and Blake are, of course, free from the artificial con- 
ception of landscape. Crabbe reproduces what is before his 
eyes, with the fidelity of a Dutch artist. In one of his last 
poems, Selford Hall, or The Pictures, he criticizes Salvator and 
Claude through the words of an unsophisticated country boy, 
visiting a grand house on an errand, and taken to the picture 
gallery. ‘“ But is this Nature?” is his exclamation at a scene 
of banditti, showing “ rage, revenge, remorse, disdain, despair.” 
“ Corrupted Nature,” says his guide; 


120 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


She then displayed her knowledge. — “ That, my dear, 
Is called a Titian, this a Guido here, 

And yon a Claude — you see that lovely light, 

So soft and solemn, neither day nor night.” 


“Yes!” quoth the Boy, and “there is just the breeze, 
That curls the water, and that fans the trees; 

The ships that anchor in that pleasant bay 

All look so safe and quiet. — Claude, you say?” 


With Coleridge and Wordsworth we escape entirely from the 
conventional landscape forms; though in spite of their freedom 
from the Italian sway, it is clear that their poems are not wholly 
new and spontaneous growths in poetry, but connected with 
Thomson and Dyer, back in a long line of mediocre topog- 
raphers, and observers of nature through the medium of art. 
Even Wordsworth did not escape wholly the obsession of Sal- 
vator in wild scenes. ‘ William says that whatever Salvator 
might desire could there be found,” says Dorothy, after de- 
scribing to Coleridge the shattered tree, waterfall, and rocks of 
“a little slip of the river above Rydal.” 


VI 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 
IN ENGLAND 


THE creation of beautiful landscape scenes in nature, with 
fields and hills, woods and water, for canvas, is an art peculiarly 
British in origin,’ and of the eighteenth century in date. Of 
this their new art the British were aggressively vain, and looked 
with contempt upon Versailles and the villas of Italy. “It is 
well known to all Europe,” says the Critical Review, apropos 
of the Count de Girardin’s Essay (1783), “that the English were 
the inventors of the modern art of gardening. They have suf- 
fered all the scandal and ridicule which is the usual lot of dis- 
coverers; they have been considered as wild and visionary 
innovators, and now begin only to reap the reward. Till within 
these few years, the French have been their chief opponents . . . 
but . .. all those who wish, in their gardens, to realize the 
conceptions of the great landscape painters, imitate the Eng- 
lish.” ? Indeed, the continent, about 1770, began to adopt widely 
the English, or as they sometimes called it, to the resentment 
of the English, the Anglo-Chinese fashion; and works in French 
and Italian were added to the copious literature of landscape 
gardening. So abundant is that literature, that a survey of the 
development of gardening in the eighteenth century is quite 
complicated enough without the additional confusion which 
arises from the survival of old modes alongside the new, ac- 
cording to the culture and sophistication of the gardener. 


I 


Just after the Restoration the influence of Versailles was 
predominant. French gardeners were employed in the royal 
1 “Nous appelons les jardins de l’ordre pictoresque jardins anglais, parce 


que les Anglais sont les premiers qui en adoptérent le godt.” M. Curten, 
ainé, Essai sur les Jardins, Paris, 1807. 


2 LVI, 159. 
121 


122 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


gardens, and if Le Notre himself did not accept the invitation 
of Charles II, some of his pupils certainly came over to direct 
the work at St. James’ Park and Hampton Court, and at many 
a noble seat. The books on gardening published in the seven- 
teenth century—and there were many —show that the in- 
terest was largely practical, and never picturesque. Evelyn 
does at times express pleasure in extended prospects; the chief 
beauty of Wilton for him “ is its being so neere the downes and 
the noble plaines,” and he admires Cliefden: “ The grotts in the 
chalky rocks are pretty; tis a romantic object, and the place 
altogether answers the most poetical description that can be 
made of solitude, precipice, prospect, or whatever can con- 
tribute to a thing very like their imagination.” He thinks the 
situation “somewhat like Frascati to its front, and on the plat- 
form a circular view to the utmost edge of the horizon, which 
with the serpentining of the Thames is admirable.” But Evelyn’s 
idea of a garden was really architectural and not pictorial; 
he dealt constantly with hedges. Sir William Temple also con- 
sidered a garden as an enclosure, not too large. “I think from 
Five or Four, to Seven or Eight Acres, is as much as any Gentle- 
man need design.” What would he have said to Holkham and 
Stowe, with their eight hundreds! ‘' 

Mistress Celia Fiennes chronicles gardens as they were under 
William and Mary. The Dutch taste then prevailing empha- 
sized the artificiality of the French, often substituting gro- 
tesqueness for grandeur, especially by increasing the number 
of quaint water toys, and exaggerating the topiary work. Such 
things Celia Fiennes enjoys, — weeping statues, dripping urns, 
“cutt Trees”; and she enumerates with naive delight the 
straight-cut rides and vistos, shaded alleys, grass and gravel 
walks, canals, fountains, statues, hedges, palisades, and iron 
gates. Walls and hedges were essential parts of gardens; only 
the open fences, or gratings in the gates, looking out into the 
adjoining country, marked the beginning of the new and more 
open style. 

Shaftesbury slightly hints the coming reaction against for- 
mality. “I shall no longer resist the Passion growing in me for 
Things of a natural kind; where neither Art, nor the Conceit 
or Caprice of Man has spoiled that genuine Order, by breaking 


lil 


eee 





PLAN FOR A GARDEN. 


From Systema Horti-Culturae, by J. Woolridge, 1688. 





Ei 3s - 
ns , . 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 123 


in upon that primitive State. Even the rude Rocks, the mossy 
Caverns, the irregular unwrought Grotto’s, and broken Falls of 
Water, with all the horrid Graces of the Wilderness it-self, as 
representing Nature more, will be the more engaging, and 
appear with a Magnificence beyond the formal Mockery of 
Princely Gardens.” * He speaks lovingly, however, of the finer 
Italian gardens, “ with all those symmetries that silently ex- 
press such order, peace and sweetness.” 4 

A translation of Rapin’s Latin poem on gardens, made by 
James Gardiner, son of the Bishop of Lincoln, and published by 
Lintot in 1706, and again in 1718, with handsome plates in the 
old taste engraved by Kirkall, appeals to the older taste ex- 
clusively. As one of the complimentary poems prefacing the 
work observes, 


But Nature’s Charms are in Confusion sown, 
And want of Order marks ’em for her own. 


Rapin commends well-ranged trees (“‘ for Order is of Use ”’), elm- 
tree avenues, walks met in a center; but deprecates too elabo- 
rate cutting and twisting of paths.’ His account of water-toys 
gives a good idea of the taste from which Shaftesbury was 


revolting : 
Here a Chimaera opens wide her Jaws, 
And from her gaping Mouth a Torrent throws; 
In her wide throat the crowding Waters rise 
And foaming issue forth with horrid Noise... . 
There from a Dragon whirling round in Haste, 
On the Spectators gushing Streams are cast; 
Then with his Arms and watching of his Game, 
A brazen Huntsman stands and takes his Aim, 
To kill the Prey, but shoots a harmless Stream; 
A pleasing Cheat, at which the wondring Rout, 
At once with Laughter and Applauses shout.® 


3 Char., II, 393-394. 
4 Life, ed. Rand, p. 246. 
5 He shows gallantry: 
If more extended Walks run round the Plain, 
Light Chairs should bear in State the Female Train; 
Yet trusting to their Feet, the younger Fair, 
Walk the long Circuit, and despise the Chair. 
6 To permit these practical jokes in gardening to be played without in- 
jury to fashionable garments, servants were employed as the victims to be 
splashed. 


124 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


2 


The most influential early advocate of the free and open pros- 
pect, and escape from the artificial in gardening, was Addison. 
His dream of Liberty, in 1710 (Tatler, No. 161), implies the 
landscape of the Roman painters, in its amphitheatre-like plain, 
and meandering river, unincumbered by fences and inclosures, 
and so the more delightful. In the same vein, praising freedom 
and suggesting Claude, is the Spectator (No. 412) of two years 
later: 


Such are the Prospects of an open Champian Country, a vast un- 
cultivated Desart, of huge Heaps of Mountains, high Rocks and Preci- 
pices, or a wide Expanse of Waters, where we are not struck with the 
Novelty or Beauty of the Sight, but with that rude kind of Magnifi- 
cence which appears in many of these stupendous Works of Nature. 
Our Imagination loves to be filled with an Object, or to graspe at any 
thing that is too big for its Capacity... . The Mind of Man naturally 
hates everything that looks like Restraint upon it, and is apt to fancy it 
self under a sort of Confinement, when the Sight is pent up in a narrow 
Compass, or shortned on every Side by the Neighbourhood of Walls 
or Mountains. On the contrary, a spacious Horison is an Image of 
Liberty, where the Eye has Room to range abroad, to expatiate at large 
in the Immensity of its Views, and to lose it self amidst the Variety 
of Objects that offer themselves to its Observation. Such wide and un- 
determined Prospects are pleasing to the Fancy, as the Speculations of 
Eternity or Infinitude are to the Understanding. But if there be a 
Beauty or Uncommonness joyned with this Grandeur, as’ in a troubled 
Ocean, . . . or a spacious Landskip cut out into Rivers, Woods, Rocks, 
and Meadows, the Pleasure still grows upon us. 


And a few days later (No. 414), he again encourages revolt 
against Le Notre and the Dutch. ‘The Beauties of the most 
stately Garden or Palace lie in a narrow Compass; the Imagina- 
tion immediately runs them over, and requires something else 
to gratifie her; but in the wide Fields of Nature, the Sight 
wanders up and down without Confinement, and is fed with an 
infinite variety of Images.” ‘Though the painted landscapes 
seem unmistakably to lie behind his images, he alludes to them 
only once: “ We find the Works of Nature still more pleasing 
the more they resemble those of Art. ... We are pleased as 
well with comparing their Beauties, as with surveying them, 
and can represent them to our Minds, either as Copies or Origi- 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 125 


nals. Hence it is that we take Delight in a Prospect which is 
well laid out, and diversified with Fields and Meadows, Woods 
and Rivers.” The gardens of France and Italy he praises 
above those of England, because they are larger, and make more 
use of their neighbouring woodland,—a reason which the 
English thirty years later must have found puzzling. ‘‘ Why 
may not a whole Estate be thrown into a kind of Garden by 
frequent Plantations? ” he asks. “A Man might make a pretty 
Landskip of his own Possessions.” A few months later he 
writes the charming paper (No. 477) on the irregular garden 
with “the little wandering rill,” and compares the parterre 
makers to sonneteers, the contrivers of treillages and cascades 7? 
to romance writers, London’and Wise to heroic poets; and the 
irregular garden described is, he says, “ altogether after the 
Pindarick manner.” To our minds, Addison’s own gardening at 
Bilton was rather of the heroic style than the Pindaric; and 
so was Prior’s at Down. 

Addison’s hint in 1712 about the “ Modellers of Gardens ” 
who had an interest in disposing of their evergreens, and his 
preference of a tree “in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of 
boughs and branches ” to the cones, globes, and pyramids of 
London and Wise — “ the pedantry of vegetation,’ as Thomas 
Warton described it ®— was developed the next year by Pope in 
The Guardian. Such items in his catalogue as ‘“ Adam and Eve 
a little shattered by the fall of the Tree of Knowledge in the 
great storm. Eve and the Serpent very flourishing,” “ A Quickset 
Hog shot up into a Porcupine by being forgot a week in rainy 
weather,” “A Lavendar Pig, with Sage growing in his belly,” 
sent topiary work out of fashion; the death of London, its chief 
creator, that same year, doubtless contributed to its passing. 

Bridgeman, “the next fashionable designer of gardens,” as 
Walpole calls him, “ enlarged his plans, disdained to make every 
division tally to its opposite; and though he still adhered much 
to straight walks with high clipped hedges, they were only his 
great lines; the rest he diversified by wilderness, and with loose 
groves of oak. ... As his reformation gained footing, he ven- 
tured farther, and in the royal garden at Richmond, dared to 


7 He means the cascades over masonry, flights of stairs, etc. 
8 In his edition of Milton’s minor poems, 1785, p. 70. 


126 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


introduce cultivated fields, and even morsels of a forest appear- 
ance.” Bridgeman’s introduction of the ha-ha (so called to 
express the surprise of finding one’s way checked by an ob- 
stacle unforeseen) was the “ capital stroke” leading to the de- 
struction of walls. By means of this device (of military and 
French origin) the outlying park, and even pastures and culti- 
vated fields could be included in the general design. ‘‘ What 
adds to the bewty of this garden,” writes a traveller in 1724, 
“is, that it is bounded by no walls, but a Ha-hah, which leaves 
you the sight of a beautiful country, and makes you ignorant how 
far the high planted walks extend.” ‘“ The walks are terminated 
by Ha-hah’s,” says another, writing of Hall Barn as Waller’s 
grandson had improved it, “‘ over which you see a fine country, 
and variety of prospects every time you come to the extremity 
of the close winding walks that shut out the sun.” ® Clearly the 
ha-ha was in 1724 still a novelty, and used chiefly at the ends of 
walks. A letter of the Duchess of Queensberry in 1731 implies 
openness of landscape, but no pleasure in uneven contour: 
‘“Did you ever see Brussels? The whole country round about 
it is like the best-natured ground that ever was seen, laid out 
by a Bridgeman some years ago. ... Every blade of grass 
grows exactly to my mind.” 

The influence of Addison and Pope is perceptible in the works 
on gardening by Stephen Switzer and Batty Langley. Though 
Switzer received his training from London and Wise, he de- 
voted a large section of his Jchnographica Rustica to “ Rural 
and Extensive Gardening.” In the Proemium to his second 
edition (1743) he says: “The Hours which many of the Vir- 
tuoso’s in Gardening expended in observing the Colours of a 
Tulip . . . were better employed in open and extensive Views, 
with the Regularity of this Plantation, and the Wildness of 
another, in the sweet Meanders and precipitate Falls of a River, 
or the Rising of Hills or Promontories on each Side.... In 
this Way of Thinking I was encouraged by some of the greatest 
Genius’s of the Times when these Tracts were wrote.” A note 
explains that he means “ The Authors of the Spectator’s, Tatlers, 
and Guardians.” He quotes approvingly Pope’s lines, ‘“ Grove 


® Mrs. Cecil, History of Gardening in England, ed. 1910, pp. 224, 232. 
Manuscript letters, quoted. 


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ARTIFICIAL Ruins “ after the old Roman manner.” 


From New Principles of Gardening, by Batty Langley, 1728. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 127 


nods at grove,’ etc. The New Principles of Gardening, by Batty 
Langley, “ of Twickenham ” (1728) describes, with many illus- 
trative plates, “ the Laying out and Planting Parterres, Groves, 
Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Avenues and Parks. . . . After a more 
Grand and Rural Manner than has been done before.” There 
is nothing, he says, “‘ more Shocking than a stiff, regular Garden.” 
He gives numerous designs, obviously extracted from the paint- 
ers, for “ Ruins of Buildings, after the old Roman manner, to 
terminate such walks that end in disagreeable objects; which 
Ruins may either be painted upon canvas, or actually built in 
that Manner with Brick, and cover’d with Plaistering in Imi- 
tation of Stone/’ 1° 

Pope influenced picturesque gardening through his poems, 
through his interest in gardens, and through his connection with 
Kent. “All gardening is landscape painting,” he said. ‘ You 
may distance things by darkening them, and by narrowing... 
towards the end, in the same manner as they do in painting.” 4 
Other evidence that he viewed gardening in a definitely pictorial 
light is the Epistle to Burlington (1731) Of Taste: 


Consult the Genius of the Place in all, 

That tells the Waters or to rise or fall, 

Or helps th’ ambitious Hill the Heav’ns to scale, 

Or scoops in circling Theatres the Vale, 

Calls in the Country, catches opening Glades, 

Joins willing Woods, and varies Shades from Shades. 
Now breaks, or now directs th’ intending Lines; 
Paints as you plant, and as you work Designs. 


But the most influential passage and the most quoted, was prob- 
ably that on the old regularity: 


On ev’ry Side you look, behold the Wall! 
No pleasing Intricacies intervene, 

No artful Wildness to perplex the Scene: 
Grove nods at Grove, each Ally has a brother, 
And half the Platform just reflects the other. 


10 Something like this— painted plaster walls giving the illusion of 
extended buildings — was employed in Italian gardening, and in the English 
gardens of Evelyn’s time. ‘“ What is the vista or perspective? ” says Shaftes- 
bury, using the garden figuratively in The Beautiful; ‘a few sticks, a daubed 
wall, a cheat.” 

11 Spence’s Anecdotes, 1820, p. 144. 


128 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Yet the plan of his own garden seems to us to show slight trace 
of artful wildness or pleasing intricacies, and if grove does not 
nod at grove, mound faces mound.’ However, it had, judging 
by Walpole’s report, a picturesque effect: “ A little bit of ground 
of five acres, enclosed with three lanes, and seeing nothing. Pope 
had twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonized this, till 
it appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and open- 
ing beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick 
impenetrable woods.” Joseph Warton also is warmly apprecia- 
tive of Pope’s skill in impressing “ such a variety of scenery 
on a spot of five acres,’ and wonders whether Rousham, 
which Kent laid out for General Dormer, had not Pope’s garden 
for its model. His grotto, justified as an underground passage 
from house to garden, served a pictorial purpose, according to 
Pope’s own account, by its use as camera obscura, and by the 
views which its entrances framed.*® 

Except as Salvator’s natural arches and rocky caves may have 
affected its popularity, the grotto had little to do with Italian 
landscape, but much with that view of gardens so general in 
that century, as places for escape from facts into fiction, pas- 
toral and Arcadian; which was also the prime motive in the 
copying of Italian pictures in English grounds. 


12 4 Plan of Mr. Pope’s Garden ...by J. Serle his Gardener, 1745. 

13 A contemporary print shows this last very well. Reproduced in Mr. 
Pope, His Life and Times, by George Paston (Emily Symonds), 1909, 
II, 344. The grotto deserves a special word. Borrowed from the continent, 
where its purpose was coolness and shade, it became a favourite toy with the 
English. We hear of it from Evelyn. It afforded precious opportunities 
for moralizing, as Aaron Hill’s account of his own extraordinary accumulation 
of grottos shows. (Works, 1753, I, 199-210.) He had Grottos of Power, 
Riches, Honour, Learning, a Cave of Content, a Temple of Happiness, a 
Hovel of Poverty, a Vault of Despair, if we may believe him: all painted, 
of course, with appropriate images. The grotto continued long in favour; 
Farington seriously describes one in 1793, — the Duke of Newcastle’s, which 
took a man and his son five years to complete (Diary, I, 10). Pope’s ac- 
count shows the amazing decorations in vogue. Mrs. Delany’s correspondence 
has many passages about collecting shells, bits of stone, etc., for adorning 
grots. Large sums of money were expended on them, as well as incalculable 
time; which for places to be damp in, in England, is hard to comprehend 
today. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 129 


3 


No doubt the adoption of these Italian patterns would not 
have been so sweeping but for the appearance of William Kent, 
unsuccessful artist on canvas, infected with a passion for Italy, 
delighted with this new way of creating the landscapes which 
his pencil would not achieve, and associated with leaders of taste 
as devoted as he to the charms of Italy. Kent, one-time ap- 
prentice to a coach-painter at York, got the interest of some 
gentlemen who paid his way to Italy in 1710; there he met with 
Coke, future Earl of Leicester, and Burlington, and was their 
companion and protégé while they collected works of art and 
designs of architecture. On his return to England in 1719, or 
possibly a year or so earlier, he had rooms at Burlington’s house, 
and made the acquaintance of Pope, who contributed to form 
his taste, says Walpole, and whose ideas at Twickenham he is 
said to have borrowed for Carlton House and Rousham. He 
was soon at work for Leicester on the eight hundred acres and 
the Palladian palace at Holkham. He became dictator of de- 
sign in everything, from palaces to petticoats, but especially 
favoured for furniture and grounds.** Thanks largely to him 
and to his noble patrons, improvement of grounds was em- 
phatically the mode. Bramston’s Man of Taste (1733) includes 
it in his requisites : 

I’ll have my Gardens in the fashion too, 

For what is beautiful that is not new? 

Does it not merit the beholder’s praise, 
What’s high to sink, and what is low to raise? 


Slopes shall extend where once a green-house stood, 
And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood. 


14 “So impetuous was the fashion that two great ladies prevailed on 
him to make the designs for their birthday gowns. The one he dressed 
in a petticoat decorated with columns of the five orders; the other like a 
bronze, in a copper-coloured satin with ornaments of gold.” — Anecdotes of 
Painting. 

Kent as royal painter was the object of some ridicule. Chesterfield made 
this epigram: 


As to Apelles Ammon’s son Equal your envied wonders, save 
Would only deign to sit, This difference we see — 
So to thy pencil, Kent, alone One would no other painter have, 


Will Brunswick’s form submit. No other would have thee. 


130 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Sir Thomas Robinson tells the Earl of Carlisle in 1734 that “a 
general alteration of some of the most considerable gardens in 
the kingdom is begun, after Mr. Kent’s notions of gardening, viz. 
to lay them out, and work without level or line; it has the ap- 
pearance of beautiful nature. The celebrated gardens of Clar- 
mont, Chiswick and Stow are now full of labourers.” *® In 1743 
Walpole writes: “‘ Kent is now so fashionable that, like Addison’s 
Liberty, he 


Can make bleak rocks and barren mountains smile.” 


The ha-ha of Bridgeman was laid hold of by Kent to create 
the extended prospects in which the new fashion delighted. 
Walpole speaks with rapture of his use of it, and of his painter- 
like conception of gardening: 


At the moment of its creation appeared Kent, painter enough to taste 
the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare to dictate, 
and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight 
of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw all nature was a 
garden. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley, changing im- 
perceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or 
concave scoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence 
with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between 
their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive 
comparison. 


In all this the imitation of Claude and Gaspar is perfectly 
evident, and the art of the landscape painter in what follows: 
“The great principles on which he worked were perspective, 
and light and shade. Groupes of trees broke too uniform or too 
extensive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the 
glare of the champain; and where the view was less fortunate, 
or so much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out 
some part by thick shades, to divide it into variety, or to make 
the richest scene more enchanting by reserving it to a farther 
advance of the spectator’s step. Thus selecting favourite ob- 
jects, and veiling deformities, . . . sometimes allowing the rudest 
waste to add its foil to the richest theatre, he realised the com- 
positions of the greatest masters in painting. Where objects 
were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste as an architect 


15 H. Avery Tipping, English Homes, Period V, I, xxi. 




















THE TEMPLE OF ANCIENT VIRTUE, AT STOWE. 


hands.” 


icious 


s jud 


“ Th’ applauded work of Kent’ 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 131 


could bestow immediate termination. His buildings, his seats, 
his temples, were more the works of his pencil than of 
his compasses.” ‘ Kent’s method of embellishing a field is 
admirable,” says Lord Kames in Elements of Criticism (1762), 
“which is, to replenish it with beautiful objects, natural and 
artificial, disposed as they ought to be upon canvas in paintings.” 

We know, from the prints published by Arthur Pond in 1744, 
that Kent had in his collection examples of Italian landscape by 
Salvator and by Gaspar, at least, if no more. He was laughed 
at for carrying his imitations of painting so far as to insert 
dead trees at Kensington and Carlton Gardens, — evidently a 
Salvatorial inspiration which might have come from the 
example in his own collection; but his Italian temples and his 
management of water for picturesque effect were admired with- 
out reservation. Brown’s enemy in the Westminster Magazine 
(1780) says that where Kent’s designs have escaped Brown’s 
hand “there is an easy grandeur which is at once striking and 
delightful.” Kent’s ideas were “but rarely great,’ says Walpole 
years after Kent’s death, when the more magnificent improve- 
ments of Brown had become familiar; and the overwhelming 
domination of the serpentine so much derided by satirists seems 
to have been largely the responsibility of Kent, whose ruling 
principle was that “nature abhors a straight line.” But at his 
best he seemed Claudian to his contemporaries. Walpole recalls 
- at Stanstead, seat of the Earl of Halifax, a noble green avenue cut 
through woods; “the very extensive lawns at that seat, richly 
enclosed by venerable beech woods, and chequered by single 
beeches of vast size, particularly when you stand in the portico of 
the temple and survey the landskip that wastes itself in rivers of 
broken sea, recall such exact pictures of Claude Lorrain that it 
is difficult to conceive that he did not paint them from this very 
spot.” 

Of all his works Holkham was, according to Walpole, Kent’s 
favourite; the admirers of Brown found its vistas magnificent, 
but formal. It inspired Robert Potter to write Holkham: A 
Poem (1759), which finds pen and pencil fail in describing its 
beauties : 


Can the verse paint like Nature? Can the power 
That wakes to life free Fancy’s imag’d store. 


132 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Boast charms like her’s? Or the creative hand 
In blended tints such beauteous scenes command, 
Tho’ learned Poussin gives each grace to flow, 
And bright Lorrain’s ethereal colours glow? 


The temples which he scattered with a liberal hand counted 
for much in the impression of Italian scenery which the parks 
designed by him conveyed. Stowe (where Vanbrugh had been 
before him in buildings) showed notable examples, “ The ap- 
plauded Work of Kent’s judicious Hands.” 7 


O, how charming the walks to my fancy appear, 
What a number of temples and grottos are here! 17 


was the sentiment of most visitors, at least before 1770. “ Fields 
where Art and Nature join,” *® “ Where through one nobly simple 
scheme Ten thousand varying beauties please ”’; 1° 


Expence and Vanbrugh, vanity and show 
May build a Blenheim, but not make a Stowe. 


Walpole, visiting Stowe in 1770, at the entertainment given 
by Lord Temple for the Princess Amelia, describes the view 
through the arch erected in her honour, and looking toward 
Kent’s Palladian bridge, as “ the most enchanting of all pic- 
turesque scenes. ... You come upon it on a sudden, and 
are startled with delight on looking through it; you at once see, 
through a glade, the river winding at the bottom; from which 
a thicket rises, arched over with trees, but opened and dis- 
covering a hillock full of hay-cocks, beyond which in front 
is the Palladian bridge; and again, over that, a larger hill, 
crowned with the castle. It is a tall landscape, framed by 
the arch, and the over-bowering trees, and comprehending more 
beauties of light, shade and buildings than any picture of Al- 
bano’s I ever saw.” ‘If Stow had but half so many buildings 
as it has,” he had said before, “there would be too many; 
but that profusion, that glut, enriches, makes it look like a fine 
landscape of Albano’s: one figures oneself in Tempe or Daphne.” 

Esher was Gray’s favorite, 

16 Bell’s Fugitive Poetry, II, 94. (Thomas Lisle.) 
17 Stowe ... {By George Beckham], 1756. 


18 Ogilvie, Poems, 1762, p. 115. 
19 An Ode, Dodsley, II, 217. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 133 


The bowers, the temples and the groves 
That Kent has planned and Pelham loves . . 
There (worthy ancient Greece or Rome) 
Fair temples, opening to the sight, 

Surprise each turn with new delight.?° 


“The scenes transporting, the trees, lawns, concaves, all in the 
perfection in which the ghost of Kent would joy to see them,” 
says Walpole in 1765. Euston he found good twenty years be- 
fore, ‘because Kent has a most absolute disposition of it,” 
though he objected to the clumps of trees on so vast a stretch 
of lawn, as making it look “ like a ten of spades.”” Rousham was, 
of all Kent’s designs, Walpole’s favourite. 


Burlington, Leicester, Pelham, Bathurst, Temple, were lead- 
ers in a fashion which all gentlemen of landed property felt it 
incumbent on them to follow. “ Every Man now,” says Com- 
mon Sense in 1739, “ be his fortune what it will, is to be doing 
something at his Place, as the fashionable Phrase is; and you 
hardly meet with any Body, who, after the first Compliments, 
does not inform you, that he is zz Mortar and moving of Earth; 
the modest terms for Building and Gardening. One large Room, 
a Serpentine River, and a Wood, are become the most absolute 
Necessaries of Life, without which a Gentleman of the smallest 
Fortune thinks he makes no Figure in his Country.” Samuel 
Johnson refers to the fashion in London (1738): 


There mightst thou find some elegant retreat, 
Some hireling senator’s deserted seat; 

And stretch thy prospect o’er the smiling land... 
Direct thy rivulet, and twine thy bowers. 


Savage, addressing Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1737, pursues 
the theme in his epistle Of Public Spirit in regard to Public 
Works. He speaks pictorially: 


Up yon green slope a length of terrace lies, 

Whence gradual landscapes fade, in distant skies... 
Urns, obelisks, fanes, statues, intervene, 

Now centre, now commence, or end the scene. 


20 Bell’s Fugitive Poetry, II, 110, 113. (John Dalton.) 


134 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


4 


References to gardening and improvements are increasingly 
numerous; but only those showing the treatment of the garden 
as a picture-gallery concern us. An Essay on Harmony, as it 
relates chiefly to Situation, and Buildings (1739) shows Thom- 
son very much deferred to as an authority on landscape; garden- 
ing is treated as both poetical and pictorial. Of Windsor the 
author says: “The Beauties are such, which more nearly ap- 
proach to Solitude, and retirement; they are still images of 
Picteresque Romance, of silent Retreats, rural, and poetical.” 
The Thames at Cliefden “spreads and divides itself into a 
Multitude of pleasing Forms, sufficient to afford many fine Pic- 
teresque Views, rather in Appearance romantick, than real.” 
And realizing that his prose account is faint and languid, he 
quotes Thomson (‘‘ Young Day pours in apace ’’) as more nearly 
adequate.”? 

Kent’s use of meadows and woods made a rural style manage- 
able, and so evoked the ferme ornée, of which Wooburn Farm 
was the first notable example, and its designer and owner, 
Philip Southcote, the first of numerous gentlemen landscape 
gardeners to win fame, and, as Stephen Duck wrote, to fix the 
rule of taste: 


I see his lofty oaks advance their heads; 

I see the slope rejoice beneath their shades; 
The temple that adorns the rising brow, 

The lovely lawn-embracing stream below.?? 


A description published, with accompanying print, in 1761, 
speaks of one wide prospect “ over a large extent of meadow, 
bounded by the river Thames, which winds through the fertile 
country in the most charming manner. ... Within this elegant 
perspective are also ten or twelve villages, and several fine 
houses; and the bridge at Chertsey appears like a principal 
object.” 28 

The Leasowes and Hagley were accounted fermes ornées. 

21 Reprinted in the Oxford Magazine, 1772, IX, 6-11. 

22 Caesar’s Camp, 1755, p. 22. 


23 Royal Magazine, IV, 194. The print is also in the Oxford Magazine, 
1772. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE I 35 


To those who sought rural “ simplicity,” the complicated efforts 
of Shenstone at the Leasowes were inspiring. Graves says that 
Shenstone got his ideas for grounds from Mickleton, in 
Gloucestershire, the owner of which in turn got his from War- 
leis, in Essex, in 1735. At any rate, Shenstone, who began work 
soon after 1745, was the most widely known of gentlemen 
amateurs in landscape designing. He spread the idea of making 
pictures in landscape, and erecting seats and summer-houses 
to ensure their being observed. He also, though Stowe had al- 
ready made it familiar, struck the gently elegiac note by means 
of inscriptions; a literary treatment of the garden enormously 
popular later on with the French. Shenstone was famous for 
his skill in arranging gradations of foliage, size of trees, and 
buildings, to lengthen vistas ;7* so that he might well have been 
vexed at the Lytteltons (though Graves says he was not) for 
their introduction of visitors at the wrong end of a walk, as 
Johnson intimates. Dodsley’s description of the Leasowes is 
like that of a picture gallery in its references to scenes, land- 
scapes, and pictures viewed at various points of vantage. Hugh 
Miller, visiting the grounds (fallen into cureless ruin) in 1840, 
refers to Shenstone’s making a picture gallery of his property. 
“In pursuance of our present taste in gardening,” wrote Shen- 
stone, ‘“ every good painter of landscape seems to me the most 
proper designer.” ‘‘ Objects should be less calculated to strike 
the immediate eye, than the judgment, or well-formed imagina- 
tion, as in painting.” He divided ‘ garden-scenes” into the 
sublime, the beautiful, and the melancholy, or pensive; but 
though each scene was of a single tone, it ‘“ should contain enough 
variety to form a picture upon canvas.” 

His neighbour Lyttelton with the help of his cousin Pitt 
developed Hagley in the picturesque style. “ You might draw, 
but I cannot describe the enchanting scenes of this park,” wrote 
Walpole to Bentley in 1753. ‘Such lawns, such wood, rills, 
cascades, and a thickness of verdure quite to the summit of the 
hill and surmounting such a vale .. . extending quite to the 
Black Mountain in Wales, that I quite forgot my favourite 


24 Cf. Pope: “All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: — 
the contrasts, the management of surprises, and the concealment of bounds”; 
the contrasts meaning “the disposition of the lights and shades.” Spence, 
p. 260, 


136 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Thames. ... Then there is such a scene of a small lake with 
cascades falling down such a Parnassus! with a circular temple 
on the distant eminence, ... and there is a hermitage, so ex- 
actly like those in Sadeler’s prints, on the brow of a shady moun- 
tain . . . and there is such a pretty well under a wood, like the 
Samaritan woman’s in a picture of Nicolo Poussin.” 

The most famous “ object ” at Hagley was the Gothic ruin, 
designed for Lyttelton by his friend Sanderson Miller, and still 
standing. “It has the true rust of the Barons’ Wars,” says the 
ardent Walpole. The ridicule directed against the artificial 
ruins in eighteenth century gardening fails to take account 
of the main intention of their designers: that they should supply 
a necessary part of the picture which was being painted in 
landscape. Shenstone is thinking of this when he writes of the 
ruin at Hagley, “ They are going to build a castle in the park 
around the lodge, which, if well executed, will have a fine effect.” 
The ruin was both an “ object ” and a symbol, as were the classic 
ruins in Claude’s pictures. This mixed view is manifest in a 
contemporary account of “this becoming object, “this eligible 
ruin,” which adds much dignity to the scene, “ and is valuable ” 
not merely as an object only, to give a livelier consequence to 
the landscape, but for use; being a lodge for the keeper of the 
park. ... To keep the whole design in its purity, to wipe away 
any suspicion of its being any otherwise than a real ruin, the 
large and mossy stones which have seemingly tumbled down from 
the tottering and ruinous wall are suffered to lie about the dif- 
ferent parts of the building in the utmost confusion . . . while 
to throw a deeper solemnity over it ... ivy is encouraged to 
climb about the walls and turrets.” 2° Parts of this structure 
were genuine; the window-frames came from the ruined abbey 
of Halesowen.”® | 

No wonder the elderly antiquary in Richard Graves’ The 
Spiritual Quixote is concerned lest the artificial ruins introduce 
serious confusion in his study. The subject of ruins in gardens 
is elaborately discussed in A Dialogue on Stowe (1748). “ Has 
not that Ruin a good Effect?” asks Callophilus. ‘The Sound 
of the Cascade, the Shrubs half-concealing the ragged view, and 


25 Joseph Heeley, Letters on the Beauties of Hagley, Envil, and the Lea- 
sowes, 1777, I, 173-175. 
26 Wyndham, Chronicles of the Eighteenth Century, 1924, I 179. 














































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 137 


those dancing Fawns and Satyrs, I assure you, raise very roman- 
tick Ideas in my Head.” His friend Polypthon agrees: ‘‘ There 
is something so vastly Picturesque, and pleasing to the Imagina- 
tion in such Objects, that they are a great Addition to any 
Landskip.” But he wonders why “we are more taken with Pros- 
pects of this ruinous kind, than with Views of Plenty and Pros- 
perity?”’ His friend explains that there is a difference between 
moral and imaginative pleasures; the latter may be given by a 
rock “ beautifully set off with Light and Shade, and garnished 
with flourishing Bushes,” and concludes, “ Yon old Hermitage 
gives us this sort of Pleasure; it is of the romantick kind.” 
Lord Kames, also, views these “ objects” as sources of aesthetic 
enjoyment: “A ruin, affording a sort of melancholy pleasure, 
ought not to be seen from a flower-parterre; but to pass from an 
exhilarating object to a ruin has a fine effect.” 

Sanderson Miller was the chief designer of ruins. By his castle 
at Hagley he had “ got everlasting fame,” a friend tells him, 
“so that I hear talk of nothing else.” ?7 Even Italian Holkham, 
Lyttelton wrote him, “ wants the view of Gothick Castle to 
make it compleat, of which himself is so sensible that he had 
desired me to make interest with you to come and give 
him a Plan.” Pitt (who talks of “ that great Landskip Painter, 
the Sun”) calls upon Miller’s imagination “for a very con- 
siderable Gothick Object which is to stand in a very fine situa- 
tion on the hills near Bath,” in the grounds of Allen. Lord 
Chancellor Hardwicke has a mind for one. ‘“ Mearly the walls 
and semblance of an old castle to make an object from the house. 

As the back will be immediately closed by the wood, 
there is no regard to it, nor to the left side, but only to the front 
and right side.... He would have no staircase nor leads 
in any of the towers, but mearly the walls so built as to have 
the appearance of a ruined castle.” Sir William Chambers 
introduced a Roman ruin—a triumphal arch —among the 
Chinese adornments of Kew. The introduction of the generally 
Gothic ruins ** seems alien to Italian landscape; but the hint of 
mingling classic and mediaeval came from Claude, if they needed 
it. And the importance of ruins in pictures was certainly learned 


27 Correspondence, p. 135. (Written about 1748.) 
28 A volume containing designs for many ruins, generally with false fronts, 


138 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


from Claude; indeed those buildings, as a critic of painting 
remarks, ‘are become in a manner naturalised to the trees and 
woods.” 7° 
The broken arch, 
Or mouldering wall, well taught to counterfeit 
The waste of time, to solemn thoughts excite, 
And crown with graceful pomp the shaggy hill. 


Thus in Edgehill Shenstone’s friend Jago praises Miller’s con- 
structions. The poem is “a number of distinct scenes, cor- 
responding to the different times of day, each forming an entire 
picture, and containing its due proportion of objects and colour- 
ing.’ Richard Jago was himself a gardener of his small plot, 
and his poem is made up of descriptions of the neighbouring 
seats and their improvements, with the conventional formula 
for landscape, 
. Intermixture sweet 

Of lawns and groves, of open and retired, 

Vales, farms, towns, villas, castles, distant spires, 

And hills on hills, with ambient clouds enrob’d, 

In long succession court the lab’ring sight, 

Lost in the bright confusion. 


He follows his friend Shenstone in assuming that “to plan the 
rural seat”? is to copy “the well-form’d picture and correct 
design,’ and his favourite landscape involves a champaign 
country opening to the south, encircled by hills and woods, and 
with “chaste dome And fair rotunda” placed on “the swelling 
mount.” 

Richard Graves, another and more intimate friend of Shen- 
stone, is a Satirist of the gardeners. His best satire is his novel, 
Columella; but his early poem, Love of Order, is a revolt against 
excesses in irregularity. He ridicules the designers in miniature 
of grand and picturesque effects: 


Though P—tt in his Arcadian Views, 
Fair Beauty’s waving line pursues; 

And, sketching with a Master’s skill 
Contrasts each grove and rising hill; 
And, from variety of charms, 


and intended to serve as cow-sheds, observation towers, etc., is Charles Mid- 
dleton’s Decoration of Parks and Gardens, [1800]. 
29 Town and Country Magazine, XV, 527. (1783). 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 139 


With one grand whole our fancy warms; 
Yet let not us inferior folks 

Expose ourselves to great men’s jokes, 
But usefully our ground dispose, 

By planting cabbages in rows. 


The gardener’s task he compares with the painter’s: 


Discordant objects taught to join, 

Now form, now break, the varying line; 
From well-rang’d lights one mass compose, 
Till with full strength the landskip glows. 


And he sees landscape in terms of picture: 


Amidst these circling woods, in chastest style, 

How sweetly rises yon majestic pile! 

The silver lake, from its meand’ring tides, 

Reflects each object which adorns its sides. 

The gently-rising slopes, the opening glades, 

The varied scenes of mingled lights and shades, 

A landscape form, which Claude well-pleas’d might view, 
Tho’ none but Nature’s pencil ever drew.®° 


Another poet influenced by Shenstone was Dodsley; the second 
part of his Agriculture has to do with landscape gardening: 


Genius of gardens! nature’s fairest child! 

Thou who, inspir’d by the directing mind 

Of Heav’n didst plant the scenes of Paradise! 
Welcome, at length, thrice welcome, to the shore 
Of Britain’s beauteous isle; there verdant plains, 
There hills and dales, and woods and waters join, 
To aid thy pencil, favour thy designs, 

And give thy varying landscape every charm. 


In his lines on Wooburn Farm the idea of painting recurs: 


. . . Ornamented fields, where gay 

Variety, where mingled lights and shades, 

Where lawns and groves, and opening prospects break 
With sweet surprise, upon the wandering eye.*! 


80 Fuphrosyne, 1773, I, 7, 8; 19-21, II, 79. 

31 Other associates of Shenstone who wrote on gardening, but less in the 
pictorial manner, were Joseph Giles, and the cobbler poet, James Woodhouse, 
who was employed at the Leasowes and later by Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, 
Perhaps Dr. Dalton, friend of Lady Luxborough, may be included. 


140 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Shenstone and Lyttelton were far from alone among amateur 
gardeners. At Enfield Chace Lyttelton’s cousin, Pitt, studied 
picturesque effects; he made use of wild forest in contrast to 
inclosure, had a temple of Pan in “ his Arcadian views,” and, in 
advance of Uvedale Price, ‘“‘a successful imitation of a bye- 
lane.” #2 About the same time — 1750 — Charles Hamilton at 
Pain’s Hill in Surrey and Mr. Morris (assisted by Richard 
Cambridge) at Persfield on the Wye undertook their extremely 
picturesque grounds. Stourhead was slightly later, at least in 
its more elaborate beauties. 


5 
In the period between 1750 and 1783 —the year of his death 
— Lancelot Brown reigned, but with not entirely undisputed 
sway, over the practice of landscape gardening. A kitchen- 
gardener at Stowe, he showed such a gift of foreseeing the 
“ capabilities ” of grounds, as his phrase was, that he gained the 
interest of Lord Temple, and was recommended to his friends. 
While still bailiff at Stowe, he was permitted to direct work 
elsewhere, and finally set up independently as improver, when 
he took over the changes at Blenheim. His improvements there 
brought him enormous fame, especially his management of the 
water. It was his boast that Thames could never forgive him 
for the glories of Blenheim; and all except a minority of the 
tasteful agreed. Brown had little education, but was shrewd, 
intelligent, honest, and able; “ he had wit, learning, and great 
integrity,’ Walpole says, and seems to have had considerable 
artistic endowment, if limited in variety. Joseph Warton thought 
it “neither exaggeration or affectation to call Mr. Brown a 

great painter; for he has realized 


Whate’er Lorrain light-touched with softening hue, 
Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew.” 


By captious gentlemen he was sometimes blamed for monotony 
and tameness, and for the lack of knowledge which made him 
alter old scenes without regard to historical and sentimental 
considerations; and blame falls on him heavily today for his 
destruction of avenues. He was certainly self-confident, and 

382 George Mason, Essay on Design in Gardening, 1795, pp. 116-117. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE I4I 


took his art with a seriousness which impressed both his ad- 
mirers and his opponents. He liked to give his art a literary 
turn. Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu speaks of her gardens and wood 
at Sandleford as turning under his direction, into “ sweet pasto- 
rals and gentle elegiacs. He is an agreeable, pleasant com- 
panion, as well as a great genius in his profession,” she adds. 
“TI consider him as a great poet.” ** This was the year before 
his death; about the time that he amusingly laid down his 
ideas of composition to Hannah More, in the “very agreeable 
two hours ” which she spent with him: 


He promised to give me taste by inoculation. I am sure he has a 
charming one, and he illustrates every thing he says about gardening 
with some literary or grammatical allusion. He told me he compared 
his art to literary composition. Now there, said he, pointing his finger, 
I make a comma, and there, pointing to another part (where an inter- 
ruption is desirable to break the view) a parenthesis — now a full stop, 
and then I begin another subject.*+ 


When, shortly before his death, a group of Irish noblemen made 
him a lavish offer if he would supervise their improvements, 
he refused, saying that he had not yet finished England. He was 
once boasting to Richard Owen Cambridge of the changes he 
had made in the face of the country, and of further plans. 
Cambridge gravely remarked, “ Mr. Brown, I very earnestly 
wish I may die before you.” ‘‘ Why so?” asked the surprised 
Brown. “ Because I should like to see heaven before you had 
improved it.” A hostile critic in the Westminster Magazine for 
1773 blames his extravagances of inversion. ‘‘ No person can 
execute his grotesque ideas, unless he has a pond full of moun- 
tains.” 5 

But this hostility was not general. From the time of his 
earliest improvements, at Croome and Blenheim, there arose a 
continuous eulogy for his development of “the capabilities ” 
of the chief seats of England. Walpole speaks favourably of 
Warwick in 1751, as “ well laid out by one Brown, who has set 
up on a few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote ”; and character- 
istically adds, “ one sees what the prevalence of taste does; 

33 Mrs. Montagu, “Queen of the Blues,” ed. Blunt, 1924, Il, 123. 


384 Memoirs, ed. Roberts, 1834, I, 267. 
85 T, 590-591. See also VIII, 249-254. 


142 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


since Brook, who would have chuckled to have been born in an 
age of clipt hedges and cockle-shell avenues, has submitted to 
let his garden and park be natural.” William Whitehead has 
some extravagant lines On the Late Improvements at Nuneham, 
in which Nature and Brown encounter, and Brown has the best 
of it. The lady, a pettish goddess, demands to know how he 
can take credit for the results there. He replies: 


Who drew o’er the surface, did you or did I, 

The smooth-flowing outline, that steals from the eye, 

The soft undulations, both distant and near, 

That heave from the ground, and yet scarcely appear? 

Who thinn’d, and who group’d, and who scatter’d the trees? 
Who bade the slopes fall with such elegant ease? 

Who cast them in shade, and who plac’d them in light? 

Who bade them divide, and who bade them unite? 

The ridges are melted, the boundaries gone.*¢ 


“The place is more Elysian than ever, the river full to the 
brim, and the church, by one touch of Albano’s pencil, is be- 
come a temple, and a principal feature of one of the most 
beautiful landscapes in the world,” writes Walpole of Nuneham 
in 1780. 

Varied woods and lawns and streams combine 

With one loud voice, to prove a BRown’s design, 


says the poet of Richmond Hill (1807). 

The praise and growing dispraise of Brown take up a large 
part of the discussion of gardening for the last half of the 
century; particular comment belongs to individual names. For 
our purpose it is important to observe that in his emphasis on 
water, and his treatment of it, in his use of the clump, and par- 
ticularly in his effects of space, he appears to have followed 
Claude and the painters, though less closely than his picturesque 
critics would have had him. 


6 


How great was the interest in gardening in the middle of the 
century is seen in that periodical paper written by and for men 


86 Anderson’s Poets, XI, 951. See also XI, 593, for Edward Lovibond’s 
licentious lines on Clermont. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 143 


of fashion, The World (1753-1756). There are essays con- 
cerned with gardening by Francis Coventry, Richard Owen Cam- 
bridge, and Horace Walpole. Coventry has a brief history of 
English Gardening (No. 15, April 12, 1755), especially as shown 
by the country adjacent to London, which is “ usually new 
created once in twenty or thirty years.” ‘Our present artists 
in GARDENING far exceed the wildness of nature, and pretending 
to improve upon the plans of Kent, distort their ground into ir- 
regularity the most offensive that can be imagined. A great comic 
painter has proved, I am told, in a piece every day expected, that 
the line of beauty is a S: I take this to be the unanimous opinion 
of all our professors of horticulture.” For the serpentine, which 
was the object of so much satire, we may hold not only Kent 
but to some extent Claude, responsible; later, the Chinese in- 
fluence helped it along, together with the zigzag. 

Richard Owen Cambridge, himself an amateur improver, wrote 
in ridicule of the rage for alteration (No. 76), and of the modern 
art of laying out ground (Nos. 118, 119). ‘‘ Whatever may have 
been reported, whether truly or falsely, of the Chinese gardens, it 
is certain that we are the first of the Europeans who have 
founded this taste.” But the new art laid great demands on 
the gardener, who must study all the arts, “and since it has 
been thought necessary to embellish rural scenes with all the 
varieties of architecture, from single pillars and_ obelisks, 
to bridges, ruins, pantheons, and even castles and churches,” 
the designer of gardens must rival Solomon in knowledge of 
building. 

The first of the papers touching gardening was Walpole’s 
(No. 6) on the daily progress toward nature, in gardens as in 
other things. ‘“ There is not a citizen who does not take more 
pains to torture his acre and half into irregularities, than he 
formerly would have employed to make it as formal as his 
cravat. Kent, the friend of nature, was the Calvin of this ref- 
ormation, but like the other champion of truth, after having 
routed tinsel and trumpery, with the true zeal of a founder of a 
sect, he pushed his discipline to the deformity of holiness.” 
Walpole himself practiced gardening on a small scale; in 1748 
and 1749 it was, he says, his great delight. In 1750 he was 
sure that Mann would be pleased with the liberty of taste that 


144 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


had been developed; “ the country wears a new face; every- 
body is improving their places.” How Italian were some of 
them is seen in his account of Mereworth, Lord Westmoreland’s, 
in 1752, the house itself on a Palladian plan: ‘“ A wood that 
runs up a hill behind the house is broken like an Albano land- 
scape with an octagon temple and a triumphal arch.” Of Went- 
worth Castle, three years later: ‘ There is a beautiful (artificial) 
river, with a fine semi-circular wood overlooking it,’ and the 
temple of Tivoli placed happily on a rising toward the end.” 
By 1760 he was out of temper with excessive alteration, and 
“wondered, with the rage of taste which now reigns, that nobody 
has laid a plan before the Society for the Reformation of 
Manners, with a proposal for altering and improving the New 
Jerusalem in the modern style, upon consideration that nobody 
one knows could bear to go into so old-fashioned a town.” 
Walpole’s Essay, the most important except perhaps Whately’s of 
the host of works on gardening, is better reserved for discussion 
in its place. 

Gray, too, was a lover of gardening, though he lacked the op- 
portunity of practicing it which was enjoyed by his friends 
Walpole, Mason, and Norton Nicholls. He ridiculed Batty 
Langley, and admired Mr. Southcote’s Paradise, but Esher was 
his favourite; though he evidently found Kent too classic, and 
thought that he had not read the Gothic classics with attention. 
Lord Radnor’s he called ‘a laughing scene.” Mr. Greathead at 
Guy’s Cliff — “a fat young Man with a head & face much bigger 
than they are usually worn” —provoked Gray to lament the 
outrages done upon nature by the tasteless, — a frequent theme 
for the person comfortably assured of taste: 


It was naturally a very agreeable rock, whose Cliffs cover’d with large 
trees hung beetleing over the Avon, wch. twists twenty ways in sight 
of it ... but behold the trees are cut down to make room for flower- 
ing shrubs, the rock is cut up, till it is as smooth & as sleek as sattin; 
the river has a gravel-walk by its side; the Cell is a Grotto with cockle- 
shells and looking-glass; the fountains have an iron-gate before them, 
and the Chantry is a Barn... even the poorest bits of nature, that 
remain, are daily threatened, for he says ( & I am sure, when the Great- 
heads are once set upon a thing, they will do it) he is determined it shall 
be all new. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 145 


7 

The second half of the century produced works on gardening 
in great abundance, in both verse and prose. In the vanguard 
of the garden-poets was the Reverend Stephen Duck, whose 
Caesar’s Camp (1755) gives an artistic Druid’s appreciative 
prophecy of the Thames valley, as it will appear under the 
- improvements of the Duke of Cumberland (famed for his gar- 
dening at Cranbourne Chace), the Prince of Wales, “ nature’s 
children, Hamilton and Spence,” Ligonier, Newcastle, Pelham, 
and others. The descriptions, while vague and similar, follow 
the pictorial and “ natural ” ideas of gardening. 

Mr. William Chambers, later, thanks to his Swedish order, 
Sir William, produced his large and elegant Designs of Chinese 
Buildings in 1757, and in the appended description of Chinese 
gardening — largely from hearsay, as he admits — gave briefly 
the ideas of “the pleasing, horrid and enchanted,” the last 
being ‘“‘ what'we call romantic,” in Chinese gardening. The only 
trace of that jealousy of Brown which seems to have inspired 
his later Dissertation is the conclusion that Chinese gardening 
is quite beyond the range of a “ person of narrow intellect.” 
For the account of Chambers’ extravagantly picturesque ideal for 
gardens, we may wait; only noticing the impressive list of sub- 
scribers to his large and sumptuous volume, which included many 
of the noble and gentle amateurs of gardening, — Hamilton, 
General Conway, Sir James Lowther, Earl Temple, Horace 
Walpole. 

In 1767 appeared a history in verse of The Rise and Progress 
of the Present Taste in Planting Parks, Pleasure Grounds, Gar- 
dens, &c. From Henry the Eighth to King George III, dedi- 
cated to Viscount Irwin. The author remained anonymous, 
even to Walpole. All the important English gardens and gar- 
deners are noticed. Sir William Temple is condemn’d because 
of lack of taste 

... for undulating hills, 
Bustles of oak, fine vales, and murmuring rills; 


Extensive lawns, and close embracing shades, 
Long lakes, bright spiry rocks, and opening glades. 


The true art consists 


146 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


In showing Nature great in every part, 

Which chiefly flows from mingled lights and shades, 
In lawns, and woods, hills, rivers, rocks and glades; 
For only happy ’s that assemblage made 

Where force of light contends with force of shade. 


High honours are paid to Brown, who is the climax of garden- 
ing; in terms that are pictorial, as indeed they are throughout 
this poem, but here with a dash of the literary: 


At Blenheim, Croom and Caversham we trace 
Salvator’s wildness, Claud’s enlivening grace, 
Cascades and Lakes as fine as Risdale drew, 

While Nature’s vary’d in each charming view. 

To paint his works wou’d Pousin’s Powers require, 
Milton’s sublimity and Dryden’s fire... . 

Born to grace Nature, and her works complete; 
With all that’s beautiful, sublime and great! 

For him each Muse enwreathes the Laurel Crown, 
And consecrates to Fame immortal Brown. 


The first edition of the Reverend George Mason’s Essay on De- 
sign in Gardening (he was not related to William) appeared 
anonymously in 1767, and got little attention except an unfavour- 
able notice in the Gentleman’s Magazine; though the author in 
his expanded edition of 1795 asserted that succeeding writers had 
“silently adopted ” his sentiments. He evidently meant Thomas 
Whately, literary critic and member of the House, whose Obser- 
vations on Modern Gardening (1770) was the text-book of the 
gentleman gardener, in both England and France. A second edi- 
tion that year, and four more before the elaborate one with plates 
by Woollett in 1801 indicate its popularity; and there was an 
important French translation in 1771. 

“They have translated Mr. Whately’s book, and the Lord 
knows what barbarism is going to be laid at our door,” says Wal- 
pole, whose opinion of French taste in gardening was low. 
Walpole thought the work ingenious and carefully executed, 
though he was a little jealous at Whately’s having got before him 
into print. Whately considered gardening “as superior to land- 
scape painting as a reality to a representation.” But he shows 
the influence of the painters. He prefers concave ground, “ as 
the more elegant shape ” (the Claudian amphitheatre), and likes 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 147 


bridges, sometimes, as Claude has them, more than one in a scene. 
He has a section “ Of Picturesque Beauty’; picturesque being 
“‘ a denomination in general expressive of excellence, but which by 
being too indiscriminately applied may be sometimes productive 
of errors.” The relation of pictures and nature meets his ap- 
proval: “ We are delighted to see those objects in the reality, 
which we are used to admire in the representation; and we im- 
prove upon their intrinsic merit, by recollecting their effects in 
the picture.” But he would use the pictures “ as studies, not as 
models; for a picture and a scene in nature, though they agree 
in many yet differ in some particulars.” He likes the idea of 
representing a scene or object celebrated in description or 
familiar in idea. “ Artificial ruins, lakes, rivers, fall under this 
denomination; the air of a seat extended to a distance, and 
scenes calculated to raise ideas of Arcadian elegance, or of 
rural simplicity.” He suggests, however, in preference to classic 
temples for British forest scenes, “the semblance of an antient 
British monument ” made of brick or plastered timber, as “ an 
object to be seen at a distance, rude and large, and in character 
agreeable to a wild view”; but nothing that might not really 
belong to such a situation. “ The fine effect of a dark green tree, 
or groupe of trees, with nothing behind it but the splendour of a 
morning, or the glow of an evening sky, cannot be unknown to 
any who was ever delighted with a picture of Claude, or with 
the beautiful originals in nature.” 

Horace Walpole’s Essay on Gardening was first published in 
1771, at the end of the fourth edition of Anecdotes of Painting; 
and again in 1785, with the translation by the Duc de Nivernois. 
Magazines quoted it, cultivated persons referred to it familiarly ; 
it was in all polite hands. Though brief, it was the best histori- 
cal account of the subject which had appeared. It covered only 
the time up to the age of Brown, who, since he was yet living, 
received only a graceful gesture of approval. As would be ex- 
pected of a connoisseur, Walpole holds Milton and Claude 
Lorrain to be the true prophets of English gardening: “ The 
description of Eden is a warmer and more just picture of 
the present style than Claud Lorrain could have painted from 
Hagley or Stourhead.” Kent is named as the founder of the 
style, which, since it was founded on landscape painting, Walpole 


148 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


would call landscape gardening. He introduces the term as if it 
were new, though Shenstone had suggested the connection.%7 
“We have given the true model of gardening to the world,” says 
Walpole; “let other countries mimic or corrupt our taste, but 
let it reign here on its verdant throne, original by its elegant 
simplicity, and proud of no other art, than that of softening na- 
ture’s harshnesses, and copying her graceful touch.” He glows 
with enthusiasm: 


How rich, how gay, how picturesque, the face of the country! The 
demolition of walls laying open each improvement, every journey is made 
through a succession of pictures. . . . Enough has been done to estab- 
lish such a school of landscape as cannot be found on the rest of the 
globe. If we have the seeds of a Claud or a Gaspar among us, he 
must come forth. If wood, water, vallies, glades, can inspire a poet 
or a painter, this is the country, this is the age, to produce them. 


Yet when at last the painters came, it was not from Stourhead 
or Hagley or Persfield, but out of the low-lying, “ fenny ” east 
country, and from London. 

In 1772 Sir William Chambers published his much-talked- 
of Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, elaborated from his de- 
scription of 1757, and more directly aimed at Brown. The 
jealousy which the royal architect and designer of the pagoda 
at Kew felt toward the royal gardener and improver of Rich- 
mond Park was, as a Monthly reviewer implies, common gossip.*® 
According to Chambers, the gardens of Brown and his disciples 
“ differ very little from common fields . . . so little variety in 
the objects, such poverty of imagination in the contrivance, and 
of art in the arrangement, that these compositions rather appear 
the offspring of chance than of design.” ‘The visitor on entering 


is treated with the sight of a large green field, scattered over with a 
few struggling trees, and verged with a confused border of little shrubs, 
and flowers; upon farther inspection, he finds a little serpentine path, 
twining in regular esses amongst the shrubs of the border, upon which 


87 Others are slow to accept the term, and cling for years to such 
nomenclature as “ rural ornamentation,” “embellishment of grounds,” etc., 
especially those who are pro-Brown, and opposed to the assumption that 
the gardener must follow the painter. 

38 Cf. The Estate Orators, 1774: 


% Brown, in quaint art whom Chambers may excel, 
But ne’er could capabilitate so well.” 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 149 


he is to go round, to look on one side at what he has already seen, 
the large green field. ... From time to time he perceives a little seat 
or temple stuck up against the wall; he rejoices at the discovery; sits 
down, rests his wearied limbs, and then reels on again, cursing the line 
of beauty. 


In such monotonous reiterations of the scant materials of na- 
ture — water, plants, and ground —says Chambers, with some- 
thing like a sneer, “it matters not who are the gardeners; 
whether a peasant or a Poussin. But wherever a better style is 
adopted . . . gardeners must be men of genius, experience, and 
judgment; quick in perception, rich in expedients, fertile in 
imagination, and thoroughly versed in all the affections of the 
human mind.” ‘ Chambers’ book is written in wild revenge 
against Brown,” writes Walpole to Mason; “ the only surprising 
consequence is, that it is laughed at, and is not likely to be 
adopted as I expected; for nothing is so tempting to fools as 
advice to deprave taste.” 

The account of Chinese gardening, as Chambers admitted, was 
more from hearsay than from observation; *® though delivered 
with great authority of tone. Its “ pleasing, terrible, and sur- 
prising ” scenes have little to do with Claude, but have a hint 
of Salvator, and still more of wax-works. They are certainly 
pictorial, as well as allegorical. Thus, in the autumnal scenes, 
the foliage is carefully arranged for effect of colouring; and dead 
trees, pollards, and stumps are mingled (a notion for which Kent 
was derided) both for pictorial and for moral meaning. 


The buildings with which these scenes are decorated are generally such 
as indicate decay, being intended as mementos to the passenger. Some 
are hermitages, and almshouses, where the faithful old servants of the 
family spend the remains of life in peace, amidst the tombs of their 
predecessors. ... Others are ruins of castles, palaces, temples, and 
deserted religious houses; or half-buried triumphal arches [such, perhaps, 
as Sir William had erected at Kew?] and . . . whatever else may serve 
to indicate the debility, the disappointments, and the dissolution of 
humanity; which, by co-operating with the dreary aspect of autumnal 
nature, and the inclement temperature of the air, fill the mind with 
melancholy, and incline it to serious reflections. 


39 As reviewers did not fail to point out, it is strongly reminiscent of 
the translation from Attiret, by Spence (under the name of “Sir Harry 
Beaumont”) published in Fugitive Pieces, 1754. 


150 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


A little hard on the faithful old servants, these gardens are 
not easy on the “passenger” ; who is sometimes “hurried by 
steep descending paths to subterraneous vaults . . . where lamps, 
which yield a faint glimmering light, discover the pale images 
of antient kings and heroes,” or after wandering in a dusky 
forest, ‘“‘ finds himself on the edge of precipices, . . . with cata- 
racts falling from the mountains ... or at the foot of impend- 
ing rocks, in gloomy vallies overhung with woods.” 

There is evidence that this didactic and alarming style was 
occasionally practised, even though it was generally derided. 
Arthur Young tells of a threatening rock, in some grounds near 
Bath, which came near to annihilating the passengers it was 
supposed to menace harmlessly. In the Scots Magazine of 1767 
is an engaging account of the pleasure-gardens (if that is not a 
misnomer) belonging to Mr. Tyers, proprietor of Vauxhall. 
These gardens near Dorking seem to connect with Chambers’ 
theories, though if he inspired them, it must have been through 
his description of 1757. The very walks were instructive, “ in 
some parts easy, smooth, and level, in others rugged, and uneven,” 
— “a proper emblem of human life,” — and they were decked 
with flags inscribed with moral sentiments. At the entrance of 
“the Valley of Shadow of Death ” (wherein, by the same hand 
that had adorned Vauxhall, were depicted the latter ends of 
saint and sinner) instead of columns stood two stone coffins, bear- 
ing moral admonitions “ proper to the different sexes,” and atop 
of each a human skull. The skulls were agreeably believed 
to be those which had in life appertained to a noted highwayman 
and a celebrated courtesan; and were represented as uttering re- 
spectively the warnings that “ Men, at their best state, are alto- 
gether vanity,’ and that “ Favour is deceitful and beauty is 
vain.” Incidentally, these gardens had the usual “ prospects ” of 
extensive vale and meandering river. 

Chambers did not escape ridicule. William Mason attacked 
him in the anonymous Heroic Epistle (1773), which circulated 
more widely by far than the essay which evoked it. Mason 
had personal reason; he held a brief for Brown in Book I of The 
English Garden, which had been published in 1772. He also 
decidedly held a brief for the garden which took the landscape 
painter for model. Considering his highly artificial precepts, 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE ISI 


Mason’s invocation to divine Simplicity is surprising. But 
simplicity is a relative term; and, as one of his critics observed, 
formed part of the “ macaroni cant ” of that day. Mason makes 
the customary boast of landscape gardening as a British art; 
and warns British youth that the Latian plain will afford their 
taste no aid, except that their eyes 


Shall catch those glowing scenes, that taught a CLAUDE 
To grace his canvas with Hesperian hues: 

And scenes like these on Memory’s tablet drawn, 

Bring back to Britain; there give local form 

To each idea; and if Nature lend 

Materials fit for torrent, rock or shade, 

Produce new TIvo-is. 


Shortly he calls on the muse of Painting— whom, it should 
be remembered, he followed —“‘to teach the docile pupil” of 
his song the elements of gardening: 


Of Nature’s various scenes the painter culls 

That for his fav’rite theme, where the fair whole 

Is broken into ample parts, and bold; 

Where to the eye three well-mark’d distances 

Spread their peculiar colouring. Vivid green, 
Warm brown, and black opake the foreground bears 
Conspicuous; sober olive coldly marks 

The second distance; thence the third declines 

In softer blue, or less’ning still, is lost 

In faintest purple. 


If a scene can be found bearing these gradations distinctly, the 
pupil is to apply his colours, and develop the picture. 
The names of the great three stare in capitals from a single 
page: 
O great Poussin! O Nature’s darling, CLAUDE! 
What if some rash and sacrilegious hand 
Tore from your canvass those umbrageous pines 


That frown in front, and gives each azure hill 
The charm of contrast! ... 


Such harm is done by the ill-judging planter who uproots trees, 
or plants the wrong ones and in the wrong places: 


152 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


. .. 90 should art 
Improve thy pencil’s savage dignity, 
SALVATOR! If, where, far as eye can pierce, 
Rock pil’d on rock, thy Alpine heights retire, 
She flung her random foliage, and disturb’d 
The deep repose of the majestic scene. 
This deed were impious. Ah, forgive the thought, 
Thou more than Painter, more than Poet! HE, 
Alone thy equal, who was “ Fancy’s child.” 


Again he urges the gardener to turn for guidance to “ the 
masters of correct design,’ whose works have broad contrasts 
and careless lines in place of ‘“ Dull uniformity, contrivance 
quaint, or labour’d littleness.” To the argument that Nature 
must be a better guide than the copyists of nature, he replies 
by citing Raphael, and his recourse to Greek sculpture as superior 
to living bodies. The proved authorities are best: 

. . . the favour’d few, whom heav’n has lent 
The power to seize, select and reunite 
Her loveliest features; and of these to frame 


One archetype complete of sovereign grace. 
Here Nature’s sees her fairest forms more fair. 


He runs through the history of English gardening, with ap- 
proval for Bacon (whom he misunderstands) and hard words 
for Temple. He praises Pope, who ‘‘ Waves the poetic brand o’er 
Timon’s shades,” and his associate 

KENT, who felt 
The pencil’s power; but, fir’d by higher forms 
Of beauty than that pencil knew to paint, 
Work’d with the living hues that Nature lent, 
And realiz’d his landscapes. 


Southcote and Shenstone he commends; and last, 


Him too, the living leader of thy powers, 
Great Nature! ... 
. . . Bards yet unborn 
Shall pay to Brown that tribute, fitliest paid 
In strains the beauty of his scenes inspire [sic].4° 


But though the gardener imitates the painter, the “sons of 
Claude” are the more blest, for the outline of their pictures 
stays where they put it, while the gardener’s is constantly chang- 


40 He wrote an epitaph for Brown, “the Christian, Husband, Father, 
Friend.” Works, I, 143, 








Tue Grotro AT AIMWELL. 


From Poetical Works of John Scott, Esq., 1782. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 153 


ing. This last observation is in Part II, in 1777. Parts III and 
IV appeared in 1779 and 1782. The specific instructions in 
Books II and III (as to painting fences green and other practical 
matters) and the story of Alcander in Book IV (though that has 
much to say to artificial ruins) add little regarding imitation of 
pictures. 

An Essay on the Different Natural Situations of Gardens 
(1774), reprinted with Whately in 1801, is said* to be by 
Samuel Ward. The author considers Nicolas Poussin and Sal- 
vator Rosa the two greatest landscape painters; Salvator for 
“terrible and noble natural situations,” with blasted trees and 
scarce a sign of life, and Poussin for views of temples, palaces on 
hillsides, and rich verdure. For general outline, he says, “ Per- 
haps the landskips of Poussin are the best instructor which a gar- 
dener of genius and taste can follow.” 

The Honorable Daines Barrington desisted a moment from 
archaeology and science to approve the new style, in 1785.* 
The “more particular aera of taste in gardening” at which 
England had arrived, was owing, he thought, chiefly to Kent. 
Kent realized the beautiful descriptions of the poets, ‘“ for which 
he was peculiarly adapted by being a painter; the true test of 
perfection in a modern garden is, that a landscape painter would 
choose it for a composition.” He speaks politely of Brown; 
“but I conceive that in some of his plans I see rather traces 
of the gardens of Old Stowe than of Poussin or Claude Lorraine.” 


b] 


In all this discussion of gardening and shifting of taste, the 
situation of the amateur, especially if of limited means, was 
distressing. Poor John Scott of Aimwell developed his few 
acres, about 176s, according to the mode as then understood, and 
showed them proudly to his guest, Dr. Johnson, who delighted 
his host by kindly remarking that “ none but a poet would 
have such a garden.” The grotto, said the Doctor, might well 
be called Fairy Hall; for it was fit for the Queen of the Fairies 
to dwell in. But the literature of gardening poured down, and 
Scott found his little garden all wrong: 


41 By the Hon. Mrs. Evelyn Cecil, History of Gardening in England. 
42 On the Progress of Gardening. In Archaelogia, VII. Reprinted in 
the European, VIII, 15-16. 


154 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


This long straight walk, that pool’s unmeaning round, 
These short curv’d paths that twist beneath the trees, 
Disgust the eye, and make the whole displease. 

“No scenes like this,” I say, “did Nature raise, 
Brown’s fancy frame, or Walpole’s judgment praise; 
No prototype for this did I survey 

In Woollett’s landscape, or in Mason’s lay.” 


Ridiculous imitation in little gardens of elaborate effects is 
the theme of many a satire. One, The Parsonage Improved, is 
by that forgotten Laureate, Pye. He wrote also Farington Hill, 
addressed to Bathurst, and The Progress of Refinement (1783), 
which deals with gardening, the art 


To teach the wave in graceful bends to flow, 
To crown with wood the mountain’s heathy brow, 


whereby Britain is glorified more than by other arts; 


Secure her fame unhurt by time shall stand, 
Since Mason’s verse records what Brown has plann’d. 


Among other references to picturesque gardening, we may 
notice Goldsmith’s accounts of Chinese gardening (founded on 
Chambers, apparently) and of the Leasowes, which also heightens 
facts into fiction. His friend Cradock was one of the opponents 
of Brown, regretting the uniformity caused by the domination of 
one man’s taste over most of the grounds in England. Cowper, 
another foe of Brown and his works, sighs for the “ fallen 
avenues,” thanks his friend Throckmorton (who was one of the 
clients of the improver) for sparing him yet “the obsolete pro- 
lixity of shade,” and refers disparagingly to “ clumps and lawns, 
and temples and cascades.”’ Not the least interesting comments 
are those which the Wartons contrive to introduce into their 
critical writings, as Joseph does in the Essay on Pope, and 
Thomas in his edition of Milton’s minor poems. 

The picturesque tourists belong to the next chapter. They 
generally praise the works of Brown, and talk much of “ scenes,” 
“views,” and “landscapes ” in the grounds they visit. As the 
century nears its end, they show less innocent readiness to take 
pleasure in the efforts of gentlemen amateurs, and of Brown as 
well. By that time most of them were themselves gardeners, 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 155 


presumably. Young disapproved of Brown’s treatment of ancient 
ruins; Gilpin, in spite of the admiration which his patrons 
Mason and Walpole bestow on Brown, was inclined to carp; and 
Price and Knight, as we shall see, were at open war with Brown 
and his inheritors, especially Repton. 


Some of the grounds which are most often described and most 
lavishly praised should be mentioned, in addition to those al- 
ready noticed. Mr. Charles Hamilton definitely planned his 
grounds at Pain’s Hill, near Cobham in Surrey, “ from the pic- 
tures of Poussin and the Italian masters,” according to Mitford; 
who adds that a waterfall at Bowood was modelled by Mr. 
Hamilton after a picture of Gaspar’s. He laid out the grounds 
of other gentlemen; notably of his friend Charles James Fox, 
who was very much an amateur of the picturesque. Hamilton is 
said to have hired an old man of venerable appearance to en- 
liven his picture by acting as hermit in the hermitage at Pain’s 
Hill; but the hermit, wearying of numerous visitors, resigned 
his position.*® Studley Park, near Ripon, was the work of the 
wealthy Aislabie, whose efforts were variously regarded by 
various visitors. The later connoisseurs, like Young and Gilpin, 
condemned his clearing away of the debris about Fountains 
Abbey. The grounds as they survived into the early twentieth 
century certainly showed strongly the Italian influence, circular 
temple, winding stream, wooded banks, points of observation, 
and arrangement of the path with regard to the ruin. Stour- 
head, designed by Colt Hoare, was much decorated with classic 
buildings. ‘I have never beheld the beauties of nature so well 
set off by a judicious taste of ornament, as here,” wrote John 
Wilkes to his daughter: “Wood, lawn, water, hill, plain, form 
this beauteous landscape, happily joined.” ‘ The imagination 
could not invent a more picturesque scene,” said Edward Jern- 
ingham. Persfield, Mr. Morris’s seat on the Wye, which Richard 
Cambridge assisted in designing, was another picturesque seat. 
“The united talents of a Claude, a Poussin, a Vernet and a 
Smith would,” according to Arthur Young, “scarcely be able to 
sketch its beauties.” “4 Admiration of gardening was a social 


43 J. T. Smith, Book for a Rainy Day, ed. 1905, p. 289, note. 
44 The Register of Folly; 1773, has a flattering reference. Other topo- 


156 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


convention to which even James Boswell bowed. ‘ Even in the 
midst of all that surrounded us at Ugbrook, . . . a cloudiness 
damped my mind. But I had been exhausted by riding all the 
forenoon, and expatiating upon rural beauties which I did not 
much feel.” 4° 


8 


In 1794 broke out that may be called the paper war between 
the Picturesque School and the Brownists. For over forty 
years it had been preparing, in the resentment of the gentleman 
gardener (who was inevitably a connoisseur as well) at having 
his avocation dominated by the one-time under-gardener at 
Stowe. Brown had been dead ten years, but his disciples were 
continuing his methods, and his mannerisms; and one of them, 
Humphry Repton, recognized heir to his documents and his posi- 
tion as leading improver, was a gentleman, an amateur land- 
scape painter, even an author of essays, and known to have in 
preparation a work on gardening. The picturesque theorists, 
connoisseurs, and landed gentlemen, Uvedale Price and Richard 
Payne Knight, old friends of Repton, took alarm lest his rule 
spread yet more widely what they considered the insipidity 
of Brown, and the preference of mere utility to picturesque 
beauty. They were amateur gardeners themselves, especially 
Price — Wordsworth did not altogether approve his creations — 
and Knight was a notable collector and general arbiter of the arts. 

Price had been for some time preparing a work on the theory 
of the picturesque and had often discussed his notions with 
Knight — indeed, with Repton too. Knight preceded his friend 
in print — it was assumed by collusion —with The Landscape 
(1794) which he styled “ a didactic poem,” and dedicated to Price. 
The first of Price’s Essays on the Picturesque followed shortly. 
Repton answered the two attacks with an open letter to Price; 
Price published a letter in reply to Repton. Others of the Brown- 
ists leaped to Repton’s defence; an anonymous satire in verse, A 
Sketch from the Landscape (1794), was addressed to Knight; 


graphical and picturesque poems on grounds are Paradise, by John Ogilvie, 
in Poems, 1769; Ugbrooke Park, 1776; Needwood Forest, 1776, by H. C. 
Mundy; WNetherby, and Hagley, by Thomas Marriott, in Poems, 1779; 
Grove Hill, 1779, by Thomas Maurice. These are but examples. 

45 Letters, ed. Tinker, I 238. 





‘wWOpIey paeysty Aq poaArisuy 
‘08 ‘ON ‘SILVIINAA AIaI'T 


<— we 


We a Mopeaye 2} yy ae ‘Min 74g if Z egies! Dif bar * 


A 


somes) be COG ip: oy ‘ up yas a ie PRED: PRO MBE DS Bry ‘ 





THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 157 


and William Marshall, a professional improver, author of Rural 
Ornament (1785), issued a sharp Review of the Landscape, and 
a reply to Price (1795). Repton’s Sketches and Hints on land- 
scape gardening, a costly work, published by subscription, came 
out in 1796. The copious reviews given to Knight and Price, 
and even to Marshall, show how great was the literary interest in © 
this subject. The main point of the whole controversy was 
that which Shenstone had brought up years before: whether a 
landscape painter was indeed the proper guide of a landscape 
gardener, — whether the designer of grounds ought to model his 
work after Claude, Gaspar, and Salvator. 

Knight was vigorous in maintaining that he should, and used 
strong terms in assailing the mere practitioners who thought less 
highly than did he of Salvator Rosa as a guide in gardening: 


Curse on the pedant jargon, that defines 
Beauty’s unbounded forms to given lines!... 
Or when, Salvator, from thy daring hand 
Appears in burnish’d arms some savage band, — 
Each figure boldly pressing into life, 

And breathing blood, calamity, and strife, 
Should coldly measure each component part, 
And judge thy genius by a surgeon’s art. 


Claude, however, held highest place with him; of whose draw- 
ings, indeed, Knight owned perhaps the best collection in Eng- 
land, as we are reminded in reading the poem. Titian and 
Rubens, to be sure, preceded Claude in time (Knight notices 
that landscape is a modern art) 


But both their merits, polish’d and refin’d, 

By toil and care, in patient Claude were join’d: 
Nature’s own pupil, fav’rite child of taste! 
Whose pencil, like Lycippus’ chisel, trac’d 
Vision’s nice errors, and with feign’d neglect, 
Sunk partial form in general effect. 


He is catholic in his admirations; but his precept of the three dis- 
tances is, as with Mason, founded on Claude: 


To make the landscape grateful to the sight, 
Three points of distance always should unite; 
And howsoe’er the view may be confin’d, 

Three mark’d divisions we shall always find: 


158 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Not more, where Claude extends his prospect wide, 
O’er Rome’s Campania to the Tyrrhene tide, 
(Where tow’rs and temples, mould’ring to decay, 
In pearly air appear to die away, 

And the soft distance, melting to the eye, 
Dissolves its forms into the azure sky) 

Than where, confin’d to some sequester’d rill, 
Meek Hobbima presents the village mill: — 
Not more, where great Salvator’s mountains rise, 
And hide their craggy summits in the skies; 
While towring clouds in whirling eddies roll, 

And bursting thunders seem to shake the pole; 
Than in the ivy’d cottage of Ostade, 

Waterlo’s copse, and Rysdael’s low cascade. 


His precepts are mainly based on Claude. For bridges he 
commends 


The stately arch, high rais’d with mason’d stone, 
The pond’rous flag, that forms a bridge alone, 


and refers to the Liber Veritatis for authority. Instead of 
the “ clump ” of the improvers he would have “ loose and vary’d 
groupes” of trees, such as Claude arranged, “ The foreground 
of some classic scene to grace.” And he sighs regretfully for 
the pearly air of Italy, despite its miasmic origin, whose tints 
“Melt the tender distance to the eye.” *6 

Among the passages in his poem which enraged the Brownists 
the worst was the tasteless apostrophe: 


Hence, hence, thou haggard fiend, however call’d, 
Thin, meagre genius of the bare and bald; 

Thy spade and mattock here at length lay down, 
And follow to the tomb thy fav’rite Brown. 


Price, milder than Knight, was insistent, in his Essays, on the 
picturesque. ‘“‘ Near the house,” he conceded, “ picturesque 
beauty must in many cases be sacrificed to neatness; but it is a 
sacrifice, and one that should not wantonly be made.” He 
admits that a sheep-track is not just the model for a carriage- 
drive; yet thinks it may offer useful hints. For the thistles and 

*6 He opposes the artificial ruin, however, and advises British artists 


to copy British scenes in their pictures, not “blindly follow some preceding 
guide,” or copy crudely what they never view. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 159 


docks with which the painters deck their foregrounds, ornamental 
plants may be substituted. But the painter is the true guide. 
“Quam multa vident pictores in umbris, et in eminentia, quae 
nos non vidimus,” he quotes from Cicero on his title-page, and 
repeats the story of Salvator’s reproof to the layman, — “ O pensa 
quel tu diresti se tu la videsti con gli occhi di Salvator Rosa.” 
To the anticipated objection that if pictures, which are copies of 
nature, are good, nature itself will be better as guide, he answers 
that the copies are made by men of enlarged and liberal minds, 
and are to be regarded by the layer-out of grounds as so many 
beautiful experiments by men most skilled in the grouping of 
trees, water, and buildings. The great principles of the two 
arts are the same; for general composition, grouping, har- 
mony of tints, unity of character, effect of light and shade. 
He contrasts at some length the methods of the Brownists and 
of Claude, by imagining how the improver would treat a picture 
of Claude’s — clumping trees, clearing away thickets, smoothing 
surfaces, defining the edge of the pool, smartening buildings. 

For the gentleman-gardener— for Shenstone and Hamilton 
— he has great respect. They took pictures as their models in 
gardening. “ It may be said with much truth, that the reforma- 
tion of public taste in real landscape, more immediately belongs 
to the higher landscape painters,” he says. “ There is a natural 
repugnance in him who has studied Titian, Claude, and Poussin, 
and the style of art and nature they studied, to copy the clumps, 
the naked canals, and no less naked buildings, of Mr. Brown.” 
The Essays examine in great detail all the constituents of 
gardening — trees, water, ground, buildings—vwith the recur- 
ring phrase, “ we find in nature or in Claude.” 

Repton met the attacks in the Letter (1794) which preceded 
his Sketches and Hints. This latter elaborate work, a collection 
of his various “ Red Books” prepared from designs for the 
grounds he had improved, had a delightful device of “slides,” 
or overlapping plates, the lower showing the scene before im- 
provement, the upper, folding over it, the changes proposed. 
Repton stoutly and sensibly insisted that “ Utility must often 
take the lead of beauty, and convenience be preferred to pic- 
turesque effect, in the neighbourhood of man’s habitation.” 
Rather unfairly —but the unfairness of Knight justified him 


160 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


— he chose to construe the admiration of Salvator as a recom- 
mendation of that “ wild” artist for an exact model; and quoted 
a letter from “a Right Honourable Friend ” (Windham): “A 
scene of a cavern, with banditti sitting by it, is the favourite 
subject of Salvator Rosa; but are we therefore to live in caverns, 
or encourage the neighbourhood of banditti?” 

Repton’s other works on gardening were published after 1800. 
His Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape 
Gardening (1803) has a strong note of resentment; but he is 
eager to deny that he follows the errors of Brown. He explains 
elaborately just why a painter is not a satisfactory guide for a 
gardener, yet exhibits a tendency to follow Claude wherever 
possible, — for example, in his fondness for the amphitheatre 
outline in grounds, for arrangements of water and trees, and for 
crowning “the summit of a naked brow” with a temple “such 
as the temple of the Sybil or that of Tivoli.” 

William Marshall, “ rural ornamentalist,” entered the conflict 
in A Review of the Landscape (1795). He lost his temper more 
than did Repton, who under great provocation retains his 
gentlemanly demeanour. ‘“ He is a madman, who would look 
up to CLaup, in preference to Brown, for practical ideas in Rural 
Ornament,” Marshall asserts; and thinks that “a mere Connois- 
seur in painting,” if taken to view the scenes painted by Claude, 
would find them “ insipid.’ Not that he does not admire 
“ the Prince of Landscape Painters,’’ whom he cites on his side, 
for Claude chose beautiful, not ruined, trees, and often cleared 
their stems, and smoothed the turf about them. ‘“ Many of his 
paintings differ much more, in style, from the works of SALvATOR 
Rosa, than they do from the present style of Rural Ornament.” 
Salvator is his abhorrence. “ Who, but a student in painting — 
one who had been accustomed to see dead stumps sticking out of 
canvass —could have thought of planting dead trees in a living 
landscape?” he queries, contemptuous of Kent; and suggests 
that if Salvator had been born without eyes or hands, “it would 
have been a private misfortune, and partial [z.e., private] evil 
universal good.” 

Most of the reviewers, under the literary influence of Gilpin, 
inclined to the literary side in this argument. The Critical was 
especially picturesque in its tastes, and anxious lest the whole 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 161 


of England be rendered “ insipid.” Only the Monthly, its rival, 
was strongly Reptonist, but even the Monthly found Marshall, 
however sound in ideas, very improper in tone toward gentle- 
men of fortune and talents. Miss Seward was warmly a partisan 
of Repton, her friend and correspondent; naturally he did not 
escape her tribute epistolary and poetical. She thought Knight’s 
poem ‘“‘ the Jacobinism of taste.” Mason also resented it in two 
sonnets, which show Taste rising indignant “ from his polish’d 
lawn,” and the serpentine path an “ emblem pure of legal liberty.” 
Mathias, in The Pursuits of Literature, notices the quarrel: 


With Price and Knight grounds by neglect improve, 
And banish use, for naked Nature’s love, 

Lakes, forests, rivers, in one landscape drawn, 

Thy park a county, and a heath thy lawn. 


Not that the critics do not have moments of belittling the fray. 
“To an indifferent reader who may prefer a beefsteak to a 
landscape,” says the Critical after a while, “the warmth of this 
writer on a theme of taste will appear ridiculous.” The greatest 
oddity, to a modern reader, is to find Price and Knight accounted 
the representatives of nature. 

In 1795 George Mason republished his Essay on Design, en- 
larged, with his word on the controversy. He has no high opinion 
of Brown, “ an egregious mannerist, who from having acquired 
a facility in shaping surfaces grew fond of exhibiting that 
talent without due regard to nature.’ But he would not blame 
Brown for all the faults of his successors. He mentions with 
approval another designer, contemporary with Brown, a gentle- 
man named Wright. Of Kent he has a higher opinion than was 
then general. ‘“ According to my own idea, all that has since 
been done by the most deservedly admired designers, by SouTH- 
cote, Hamitton, LytTLeTton, Pitt, SHENSTONE, Morris, for 
themselves, and by Wricurt for others, all that has been written on 
the subject . . . have proceeded from Kent.” He rejects the 
artificial ruin (of which books of designs were published as late as 
1800), nor does he agree with Price and Knight as to following 
pictures. “ Every landscape painter puts blinkers on the spec- 
tator.” Ideas may be gained from the painters; but study of 
Shenstone’s and Hamilton’s gardens will do more. Claude 


162 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


“the most ornamented of the great masters,” is more misleading 
than Gaspar as model; his pictures seem rather wonderful com- 
binations of objects by effort of genius than what were likely 
to have existed together anywhere in reality. “ Tussocks of 
rushes may have a very good effect in one of Claude’s landscapes, 
. . . but in land in any state of cultivation they would be pre- 
posterous.” 

John Trusler’s Elements of Modern Gardening (1800?) fol- 
lows the picturesque school unintelligently. He appears to take 
Mason seriously, would have ice-house and dairy take on Gothic 
shapes, and recommends “ when a romantic scene is studied,” a 
stone bridge of two or three arches, broken down in the middle, 
“the vacancy supplied by a plank or two, with a hand rail.” 
A ruin should not only serve picturesque effect, but have “some 
beautiful emblematical character” ; it is best to copy “some 
beautiful fragment of an ancient castle or abbey.” 


9 


The theory of gardening was an important branch of aesthetics 
in the eighteenth century. Lord Kames has a chapter on 
gardening and architecture. “ To paint in the gardening way,” 
he says, requires more genius than to form a landscape on can- 
vas. A landscape “ ought to be confined to a single expression.” 
Straight lines and formality he dislikes; Versailles is a monu- 
ment of depraved taste. The right sort of landscape swells the 
heart, and arouses emotions of grandeur. “ The spectator is 
conscious of an enthusiasm, which cannot bear confinement, 
nor the strictness of regularity and order; he loves to range 
at large; and is so enchanted with magnificent objects, as to 
overlook slight beauties or deformities.” Alison’s explanation 
that Italian landscape is the inspiration of English gardening 
has been cited previously.*7 He develops the notion at some 
length: the English at first copied Italian scenes, with much 
use of temples, ruins, and statues, but later arrived at more 
correct imitation of natural scenes, in the spirit of the painters. 
Like Warton, Alison attributes the increased delight in natural 
scenery to the influence of Thomson. Another writer on garden- 


47 Introduction, p. iii. 





DESIGN FOR CATTLE SHED AND GOTHIC RUIN. 


From Decorations for Parks and Gardens, by Charles Middleton. 


**So shall each part, tho’ turn’d to rural use, 
Deceive the eye with those bold feudal forms 
That Fancy loves to gaze on.” 


William Mason: The English Garden, Bk. IV. 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 163 


ing is Dr. John Aikin, an opponent of the picturesque school, 
impatient with Mason, and agreeing with Cowper in love of 
avenues.*® We should recall the remarks of Wordsworth on the 
devastation wrought by pretentious and tasteless persons upon 
the scenery of the Lakes, and his advice to the Beaumonts re- 
garding their garden; and Scott’s Essay on Landscape Garden- 
ing.*® Though with these we are far into the next century, 
it is impossible to neglect the tale which Sir Walter tells of a 
pupil of Brown, one Robertson, who in laying out the ground of 
Duddingstone, near Edinburgh, refused to allow a sight of the 
ruins of Craigmillar Castle, because, being visible over all the 
countryside, it ‘was a common prostitute”; and excluded Dud- 
dingstone Loch, because “it did not fall within his lordship’s 
property.” 
Io 


The English garden on the continent must be briefly noticed. 
Montesquieu had one at La Bréde by 1750, probably in the 
manner of Kent; at least the description so implies.°° The 
Elysée of Rousseau’s Julie evoked many an imitation. Claude 
Henri Watelet, of whose ferme ornée Walpole had a low opinion, 
published his Essai sur les Jardins in 1764. The caractéres pos- 
sible for parks he classifies as Le Pittoresque, Le Poétique, and 
Le Romanesque. Landscape gardening with him is slightly 
more literary than pictorial; he separated the art of painter 
from that of gardener. Walpole, visiting France in 1771, found 
that English gardening had gained prodigiously owing to the 
translation of Whately in that year, but was practiced with 
more zeal than taste; “ I have literally seen one that is exactly 
like a tailor’s paper of patterns.” Melchior Grimm, in England 
that same year, was moved to tender enthusiasm by the sight 
of English gardens: “ On ne peut sortir d’un jardin anglais sans 
avoir l’ame aussi affecté qu’en sortant d’une tragédie.” The 
Count de Girardin, protector of Rousseau, produced in 1777 his 
essay De la Composition des Paysages, ou Les Moyens d’embellir 
la Nature autour des Habitations, en joignant P’agréable a lutile. 


48 Letters from a Father to his Son, third ed., 1796, pp. 149-152. 

49 Quarterly, March, 1828. 

50 E.g., Memoirs of Michael Clancy, Dublin, 1750, II, 51; Montesquieu, 
Essai sur le Gout. 


164 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


This goes even beyond Mason in advocating the use of painting 
as guide. Milton is not neglected; the title-page is adorned 
with the motto, “ Ahappi rural seat of different views.” Count 
de Girardin found it surprising that when painters and poets 
provide us with so many representations of the beauties and 
simplicity of Nature, no “homme de bon sens (car c’est du bon 
sens que le gotit dépend) ” had sought to realize their pictures. 
In view of the variety of landscape-painters, it is possible to 
find models of all sorts, for “ paysages héroiques, nobles, .. . 
riches, élégantes, voluptueux, solitaires, sauvages, séveres, tran- 
quilles, frais, simples, champétres, rustiques.” His essay was 
translated into English in 1789, and somewhat annoyed the 
English because neither author nor translator accorded due recog- 
nition to English accomplishment in this sort of gardening. 
Girardin’s own park, which consisted “ of three distinct water 
scenes’ in one of which the central theme was Rousseau’s tomb, 
was. a favourite resort of British travellers before the Revolution. 

Whately’s Observations was the text-book for French imita- 
tors of English gardens. The translator was a student of the 
subject, who respected Kent, ‘“ le premier en Angleterre qui ait 
osé s’écarter vers l’année 1720, des régles de Le Notre, dans la 
composition des bosquets d’Esher.” That the mode was far 
developed by 1775 is implied in the Epitre sur la manie des 
jardins anglais of that year by Michel-Paul-Gui de Chabanon. 

The Abbé Delille exhibits the “ mania ” in Les Jardins (1782), 
much admired by English devotees of gardening. Well might 
it be, for in it English gardens were complimented elaborately 
in a long catalogue ratsonnée. “ Un jardin, a mes yeux, est un 
vaste tableau,” he says; and urges in consequence, “ soyez 
peintre,” 

Et ce qu’a la campagne emprunta la peinture, 
Que l’art reconnoissant le rende a la nature. 


There are two sorts of gardening: one, “de la nature amant 
respectueux,” the other, “ despote orgueilleux.” 


Je ne décide point entre Kent et Le Ndtre. 
L’un, content d’un verger, d’un bocage, d’un bois, 
Dessine pour le Sage, l’autre pour les rois, 


a description which would not greatly have flattered the de- 
signer of the magnificent Holkham; and Whately must have 


THE CREATION OF ITALIAN LANDSCAPE 165 


been startled to find his Matlock risen to Alpine heights; 
“Whateli, je te suis; viens, j’y monte avec toi,” cries the ecstatic 
ADDEi 

The translation of Walpole’s Essay by the Duc de Nivernois 
in 1785 was much read and increased the followers of the fashion, 
who ranged from royalty to bourgeoisie. Arthur Young, in 
1787, found Marie Antoinette’s English garden showing more 
of Sir William Chambers than of Brown, “more effort than 
nature, and more expence than taste. It is not easy to conceive 
any thing that art can introduce into a garden that is not here; 
woods, rocks, lawns, lakes, rivers, islands, cascades, grottos, 
walks, temples, and even villages.” One protesting note against 
the English style is raised by Madame de Genlis, who, in Les 
Veillées du Chateau, writes of the mountains and precipices of 
Savoy, that they would rouse disgust for “ces froids jardins a 
Vanglaise, ot l’on a voulu follement imiter de semblables effets.” 
But the Revolution (of which the natural garden was in its way 
symbolic) came to end the gentle pastimes of queen and nobles. 

In Belgium the Prince de Ligne followed the fashion, with 
reservations, at Beloeil. He published in 1778 Un Coup d’Oeil sur 
Beloeil, et sur une grande partie des jardins de l'Europe. Of 
English seats he admired most those in the grand style— 
Blenheim, Wilton, Kew— and was impatient of mock-ruins 
and pseudo-Gothic. “ Quand on voit la Grécie de plusieurs 
Anglais, et la Gothie de Mr. Walpole, on est tenté de croire 
que c’est le délire d’un mauvais réve qui a conduit leur ouvrage. 
Jaime autant son chateau d’Otrante; celui de la Tamise est 
tout aussi fou, et n’est pas plus gail.” 

The French fashion of English gardens was copied in Ger- 
many. Continental gardeners could not go quite so far as 
Price and Knight. ‘“ Nous n’adopterons pas tout a fait... 
Vidée de ces jardins entiérement pittoresques et romantiques de 
la création de Salvator Rosa,” says the author of a work pub- 
lished in Leipzig at the opening of the nineteenth century; °* 
and continues with a contrasting reference to the charms which 
a Claude and a Poussin gave to nature. In a footnote is brief 
reference to the controversy between Gilpin, Price, and Knight, 


51 Descriptions Pittoresques de Jardins du gott le plus moderne, second 
edition, Leipzig, 1805. 


166 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


who have adopted Salvator Rosa as a model, and the more 
“ grand artiste Repton.” 

Italy was late in taking over the taste, but partly adopted 
it in the last decade of the century. Arturo Graf gives a list of 
dissertations, poems and other works, including a comedy and 
a sermon in verse, either in eulogy or in ridicule of the mode.*? 

It may be doubted whether the garden was ever in any cen- 
tury a more constant subject of literary treatment than in the 
eighteenth, and whether it ever before or since so mingled the 
functions of library, picture gallery, and even pulpit; so Edward 
Barnard writes, in The Entertainments of the Garden: 


Then say; were ever rising Landskips giv’n 

Only to gaze on? No! for higher End — 

To lead the intellectual Mind to trace 

Eye and admire Perfection infinite — 

Heav’ns matchless Skill, Benevolence, and Pow’r! 5% 


52 T’Anglomania e Vinflusso inglese in Italia nel secolo XVIII, Torino, 
IQII, PP. 343-350. 
53 Virtue the Source of Pleasure, 1757, p. 122. 


Vil 
THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 


I 


“ Le Pirtoresque,” said Henri Beyle in Mémoires d’un Tou- 
riste, “ nous vient d’Angleterre; un beau paysage fait partie de la 
religion comme de l’aristocratie d’un Anglais; chez lui c’est 
Yobjet d’un sentiment sincére.” The sentiment was scarce a 
century old in England when Beyle wrote this; it really does 
not appear there until 1740, when the collecting of pictures had 
been fashionable for a score of years. It rises into frequency by 
1760, is general after 1780, and ridiculously hackneyed after 1800. 
The word, despite its frequent occurrence, and its appearance as 
early as 1705, holds an anomalous position to the very opening of 
the nineteenth century. As Steele used itin The Tender Husband, 
it is almost a synonym for graphic. Pope, who regards it as 
French in 1712, uses it again in a note to the Jliad, 1715; but 
both times in the meaning, pictorial; * which is also slow to 
receive recognition in dictionaries. The French Academy did 
not admit pittoresque until 1732; pittoresco was in common 


1 Niece. I would be drawn like the Amazon Thalestris, with a Spear in 
my Hand, and an Helmet on a Table before me.... At a distance behind 
me let there be a Dwarf, holding by the Bridle a Milk-white Palfrey... . 

Clerimont. Madam... if you please, there shall be a Cupid setting 
away your Helmet, to shew that Love should have a Part in all gallant 
Actions. 

Niece. That Circumstance may be very Picturesque. 
Act IV, Sc. ii. Dramatick Works, 1723, p. 141. 

2 Pope to Caryll, Dec. 21, 1712. Works, ed. Croker, VI, 178. “Mr. 
Phillips has two lines, which seem to me what the French call Picturesque... 
‘O’erlaid with snow, in bright confusion lie, 

And with one dazzling waste fatigue the eye.’ ” 

The marshy Spot of Ground where Dolon is killed, the Tamarisk.. . 
upon which they hang his Spoils, and the Reeds that are heap’d together to 
mark the Place, are Circumstances the most Picturesque imaginable.” Pope’s 
Iliad, 1715, III, 140. Note liv, Book X. Cf. Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 11: 
“That idea of the picturesque, from the swan just gilded with the sun 
amidst the shade of a tree over the water.” 

3 Blount, 1661, gives pictorical, pictorian, and pictural; in which he is 
followed by Coles, 1701. 


167 


168 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Italian use in the seventeenth century, but meaning painter-like, 
not picture-like. 

Gray used the word in 1740. ‘“‘ You cannot pass along a 
street,” he writes from Rome, “but you have views of some 
palace, or church, or square, or fountain, the most picturesque 
and noble one can imagine.” ‘The same combination of adjec-. 
tives returns when he writes of Dover Cliffs, 1766: ‘“ noble and 
picturesque.” His friend Dr. Brown makes use of it in the 
famous letter on Keswick, of which more later. It is common in 
Arthur Young’s Tours, from about 1766 on. Its first appearance 
in Gilpin’s work is on the title-page of his Essay on Prints (1768), 
“the Principles of Picturesque Beauty,” the stock phrase which 
recurs on the title-page of each of his later descriptive works. 
The phrase, as he says, is little understood, and vaguely used. 
He means by it precisely “ that kind of beauty which would look 
well in a picture.” * 

The word is never recognized by Johnson with a definition, 
yet he uses it to define one sense of prospect, in the fourth edition 
of the Dictionary, 1773; “A view delineated; a picturesque 
representation of a landscape.” This is of course the sense of 
in picture. Neither Rider, 1759, nor Ash, 1775, gives the word; 
nor Walker, 1794. “ Pictoresque, fr. like a picture,’ appears in 
Martin, 1754. Sheridan’s fourth edition, 1797, gives /fic- 
turesque, “suited to the pencil, though destitute of regular 
beauty,” showing the influence of Gilpin, Price, and Knight; as 
does Entick, the same year, “ exhibiting a picture, variegated.” 
Barclay, 1799, has “ Fine, beautiful, like a picture.” George 
Mason, in his Supplement to Johnson, 1801, has a half-column 
of meanings and illustrations (borrowed largely from Mason’s 
Memoirs of Gray), with a note at the close calling attention 
to Johnson’s use of it in definition. The senses Mason gives are: 
(1) What pleases the eye; (2) remarkable for singularity; (3) 
striking the imagination with the force of painting; (4). to be 
exprest in painting; (5) affording a good subject for a landscape; 
(6) proper to take a landscape from. Undiscriminating as 
are some of his definitions, their very number shows how vague 
was the employment of the word, and also how frequent, — 
in short, how like slang. 


4 Western Parts, p. 238. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 169 


Salvator Rosa was generally agreed to be, as Price says, re- 
markable beyond most painters “ for picturesque effects.” We 
may consider him largely responsible for the common identifi- 
cation of the picturesque with the irregular and wild. “In no 
other master are seen such abrupt and rugged forms, such sud- 
den deviations.” Salvator himself had such a sense of the pic- 
turesque as his admirers in England had; theirs grown partly 
out of their admiration of him. He goes to Loreto in 1662, “et 
il viaggio é assai piu curioso e pittoresco de cotesto di Fiorenza 
senza comparazione, attesoche é d’un misto cosi stravagante 
d’orrido, e di domestico, di piano e di scosceso, che non si puo 
desiderar di vantaggio per lo compiacimento dell’occhio.” He 
goes out of his way to visit the waterfall of Terni; and finds 
for it a phrase which foreshadows many an utterance of the 
eighteenth century: ‘‘cosa da far spiritare ogni incontentabile 
cervello per la sua orrida bellezza.” The association of beauty 
and horror was frequent in what were accounted sublime scenes ; 
and it was Salvator who helped to establish this conjunction. 
Not that the picturesque was of necessity sublime; a thatched 
cottage, a rustic mill, a shaggy ass, were picturesque. But 
almost inevitably the picturesque was, as these too were held 
to be, romantic, whether or not that word of shadowy meaning 
accompanied the description. 


2 

It is surprising to see how suddenly and how powerfully the 
conception of the picturesque comes into fashion. Addison 
finds the scenery of Cassis “romantic,” and does not wonder 
that poets have written of it; but he does not see it as picture. 
Lady Mary Montagu describes a “ prodigious prospect of 
mountains covered with eternal snow, of clouds hanging far 
below our feet, and of vast cascades tumbling down the rocks 
with a confused roaring”; but not picturesquely. Edward 
Wright, passing along the shore to Genoa, comes nearer, but 
indistinctly: “The Eminence I rode along, gave me a variety 
of distant Prospects; and many of them not disagreeable; the 
nearer ones often romantick enough, and would have been fine 
Situations for enchanted Castles.” 


170 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


The first instance I know of true picturesque vision in the 
eighteenth century is Dr. Thomas Herring’s impression of a 
Welsh valley. In 1738 Dr. Herring, Bishop of Bangor, and 
later Archbishop of Canterbury, made a diocesan journey through 
part of Wales, romantic and also perilous, as he pronounced it 
in retrospect, and was so much impressed by “ the magnificence 
of nature” that he feared the sight of Stowe afterwards would 
have made him smile, and he would have “beheld with con- 
tempt an artificial ruin ” after having been “ agreeably terrified 
with something like the rubbish of a creation.” The valley 
which he recalls picturesquely had rocky walls, woods, a foam- 
ing stream, with a rude bridge, a cataract down the mountain 
which shut in the valley, flocks and herds, and peasants coming 
home at evening with full pails. ‘All these images together 
put me much in mind of Poussin’s drawings, and made me fancy 
myself in Savoy, at least, if not nearer Rome.” 5 

Young Walpole, in 1739, views Savoy as picturesquely as 
possible: “ Precipices, mountains, torrents, wolves, rumblings, 
Salvator Rosa... .’ And he goes on painting appropriate 
details: ‘“ But the road, West, the road! Winding round a 
prodigious mountain, and surrounded by others, all shagged with 
hanging woods, obscured with pines, or lost in clouds! Below, 
a torrent breaking through cliffs, and tumbling through frag- 
ments of rocks! Sheets of cascades ... hasting into the 
roughened river at the bottom! Now and then an old foot- 
bridge, with a broken rail, a leaning cross, a cottage, or the 
ruin of a hermitage! This sounds too bombastic and too 
romantic to one that has not seen it, too cold for one that has.” 

The sentiments of Walpole were doubtless reinforced by those 
of Gray, who may be considered the pioneer of the picturesque 
school. Gray, in 1739, ridicules Versailles and is intoxicated 
with the sublimities of the Grande Chartreuse; the hanging 
woods of pine-trees, the monstrous precipices, the torrent 
thundering below, concurred “to form one of the most astonish- 
ing scenes I ever beheld,” “ one of the most poetical scenes im- 
aginable.” ‘‘ I do not remember to have gone ten paces without 
an exclamation, that there was no restraining: Not a precipice, 
not a torrent, not a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry. 


5 Letters from the late reverend Dr. Thomas Herring, 1777, PP. 39-42. 


“AVISIOAIUL) PAvAILF ‘wInssnypY WY 3807 
‘goL1 ‘umorg uyof Aq poAvisus ‘WOyTIey preys Aq uMVIG 
‘PlaysoysoyD JO [AVA VY} JO UOTIT[OD 9} UI BSOY AOJeATeS Aq SurjuIed & WOIY 


‘SSHNYACIIM AHL NI ONIHOVAUG NHOf ‘1S 





THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 171 


There are certain scenes that would awe an atheist into belief. 
One need not have a very fantastic imagination to see 
spirits there at noon-day.” 

Women are among the first to perceive the picturesque ; perhaps 
because so many of them copied prints, sketched, or painted. 
A magazine writer of 1766 complains, to be sure, that “ the 
fair, in general, are not qualified for conversation, nor blessed 
with a relish for sentimental pleasures. .... They never con- 
template on nature, and are insensible to her beauteous works. 

With vacant eye they pass the pleasing landskip, whose 
variegated prospects display the evidence of an all-perfect and 
all-bountiful Creator.’® This passage affords evidence that a 
sentimental enjoyment of landscape was then assumed as part 
of the cultured endowment. But no complaint of vacant eye 
could hold against Lady Hertford, or Mrs. Montagu, or her 
friends Mrs. Delany and Mrs. Carter. Lady Hertford shows 
her artistic proclivities as she travels, in 1740. Of her many 
picturesque descriptions one will serve. Crossing the Apennines 
she observes hermitages : 


as if stuck on the clefts of the rock, and old ruined fortresses that have 
scarcely left a name. Below, the firs and cypresses . . . made a gloomy 
retreat for the torrents that fell roaring from above; and the evening 
sun gave a lustre to the whole, which finished in a rich and delightful 
plain, where the rising grain, the gentle murmur of the river, the green 
meadows, the elms twined round with vines, the solitary chapels, with 
here and there some broken piece of ancient sculpture . . . both soothed 
and waked the soul, to find and adore the Great Creator. 


Mrs. Delany is a notable example of the gentlewoman actively 
interested in various arts, and because of her study of painting, 
sure to observe scenery and grounds with a picturesque eye. 
She sketches scenes in the grounds of her friends. Her slight 
descriptions are numerous; one passage which shows her 
following the usual rule is an apology for not describing: 
“ Could I have attended to the beauties en passant between 
dear, sweet Ilam and [Sudbury], I should present my dearest 
Mary with such a mixture of pastoral delights as would have 
served a Claude or a Shenstone for their whole lives.” She 
helped Mr. Delany to plan Delville, which was the first attempt 


6 Universal Magazine, 1756, p. 269. 


172 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


in Ireland in the new style of gardening. Her account of an 
Irish ball shows how landscape entered even the ball-room, in 
1752: “The room represents a wood, and there is room left 
down the middle enough for thirty couple to dance; at one end 
is a portico on Doric pillars, lighted by baskets of flowers, the 
candles green wax, so that nothing appears but the flame.” 
There is a jessamine bower, a Gothic temple (serving as side- 
board), a grotto “ extremely well exprest,’ in which sit mu- 
sicians garbed as shepherds and shepherdesses. ‘“ The trees are 
real trees with artificial leaves, but when all is done, it will 
be too much crowded to be agreeable, and most dangerous if 
the spark of a candle should fall on any of the scenery, which 
is all painted paper.” 7 

The Blues, considerably younger than Mrs. Delany, were 
all picturesque enthusiasts, in varying degrees. Mrs. Elizabeth 
Montagu, their leader, being daughter of a distinguished ama- 
teur landscape painter, was prepared to judge of scenery. At 
Tunbridge in 1754 she went on what might be called a pic- 
turesque picnic, along with Pitt, and presumably Lyttelton, his 
friend Bower and the Wests. 


We drank tea yesterday in the most beautiful rural scene that can be 
imagined, which Mr. Pitt had discovered in his morning’s ride... . 
He ordered a tent to be pitched, tea to be prepared, and his French 
horn to breathe music like the unseen genius of the wood. The com- 
pany dined with us; and we set out, number eight. After tea we rambled 
about for an hour, seeing several views, some wild as Salvator Rosa, 
others placid, and with the setting sun, worthy of Claude Lorrain.® 


Visiting Spa in 1763 she is happy to view the “ noble and sub- 
lime” prospects in a violent hurricane on a mountain top, 
accompanied by deep thunder; “ this circumstance, which wd 
have spoiled the amenity of a little scene, added dignity to this 
solemn and majestick character.” ® From the mountain one 
morning, she and Mrs. Carter watch the Cordeliers carrying 


7 Mrs. Chapone has an amusing letter, in 1776, about an al fresco pic- 
turesque entertainment by Beckford, the Arcadian beauties of which were 
painfully blasted by the northeast wind. Mrs. Cornelys’ rooms were deco- 


rated in a style to convey ideas of rural landscape, as appears from some 
descriptions. 


8 Letters, 1809, III, 315-316. 
® Mrs. Montagu, Queen of the Blues, I, 53-54. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 173 


the host in procession, and their thoughts fly to Thomson; also, 
it is clear, to Gaspar Poussin if not to Salvator Rosa: “ Their 
solemn step, lugubre habit, and the base voice of their chaunting 
deepen’d the murmur of the falling floods, and shed a browner 
horror on the woods. The dreary desart, the woods, the rocks, 
the cascades, and all the objects we look’d upon borrow’d from, 
and lent solemnity to this religious ceremony.” 

Mrs. Montagu’s dear friend, the celebrated Mrs. Carter, who 
accompanied her on some of the expeditions to Tunbridge, was 
“fond of every view of nature, from the soft landscapes of a 
vernal evening to the awful beauty of a stormy sky.” She is 
one of the best examples in her time of the sentimental treat- 
ment of nature; an attitude with her perfectly sincere and unaf- 
fected. ‘“ The sublime views of wild uncultivated nature, the 
silence of a desart, and the melancholy repose of a ruin, strikes 
the imagination with awful and affecting ideas. In such a situa- 
tion the soul expands itself,'and feels at once the greatness of 
its capacities, and the littleness of its pursuits.” She loved to 
take long walks, especially by moonlight, over the hills, along 
the shore, among the ruins of an old abbey, “in all that com- 
posure of pleasing melancholy which scenes like these so naturally 
inspire.” It offended her taste that the country about Battle 
Abbey was “too pastoral and riant to suit the ideas which be- 
long to such a spot” ; she would have liked “to have the 
ground planted with yew and cypress . . . and restore the scrub 
oak and ravens.” “Savage beauty,” the “idea of the sublime 
and terrible” which Mrs. Vesey’s letters from Wales provided, 
thrilled her; but she lamented that the intrepid lady was obliged 
to go so far out of her way to find a spot capable of amusing her 
with the danger of breaking her neck. ‘“ Safety and convenience 
are very agreeable circumstances in a place of abode; though the 
sublime objects of untamed nature afford so high an entertain- 
ment for the imagination of a poetical traveller.” But this was 
at the age of fifty-six. Studley and Fountains Abbey she ad- 
mired, untouched by the artistic scruples which affected William 
Gilpin and even Arthur Young. ‘Such scenes as these are cer- 
tainly admirably adapted to raise the imagination to sublime 
enthusiasm, and to soften the heart by poetic melancholy; but 
sublime enthusiasm and poetic melancholy are too high an exer- 


174 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


tion for our intellectual powers to be long continued without 
pain and langour,” (she was at this time sixty-five, if it is fair 
to speak of years with one so perennially young) “ and are quite 
unconnected with the general temper that qualifies us for social 
life.’ With the soft and agreeable wildness about Tunbridge 
she was pleased; the country near the rocks was “ the most per- 
fectly romantic I had ever seen, except in the descriptions of 
poets, or the paintings of Salvator Rosa.... All was wild 
spontaneous beauty, and what Mr. Mason finely calls ‘ the lone 
majesty of untamed nature.’” They drank tea in this wild 
region after sunset, and then waited “ to see the effect of moon- 
light on so solemn a scene.” 

Mrs. Chapone, another of the Blues, writes to Mrs. Car- 
ter in 1770 even more enthusiastically: “ At Taymouth in- 
deed every conceivable beauty of landscape is united with the 
sublime. Such a lake! such variegated hills rising from its 
banks! such mountains and such cloud cap’d rocks rising be- 
hind them! such a delicious green valley to receive the sweet 
winding Tay! such woods! such cascades! —in short, I am 
wild that you and all my romantic friends should see it; for 
even a Milton’s pen, or a Salvator Rosa’s pencil would fail to 
give you a complete idea of it.” 

That admired friend of these literary ladies, Lord Lyttelton, 
journeyed to Wales with his protégé, the undeserving Bower, 
in 1756, and described the sights as a connoisseur of scenery, 
especially of parks. He thought the mountains rising at a 
distance gave “a magnificence and grandeur to the scene, without 
giving you any horror or dreadful ideas,” when so far off that 
their outlines were softened. But the prospect from Berwin 
struck his mind with awful astonishment. “Nature in all 
her majesty is there, but it is the majesty of a tyrant, frown- 
ing over the ruins and desolation of a country.” The admired 
vale of Clwydd has great beauty, but lacks majesty; whereas 
in Montgomeryshire, “ as in the mind of our friend the Madona” 
(thus Lyttelton and Bower styled Mrs. Montagu) “ the soft and 
agreeable is mixed with the noble, the great, and the sublime.” 
To Lord Lyttelton’s son, the “wicked Lord,” some of this in- 
nocent enjoyment of scenery must have descended. Mrs. 
Montagu was struck with his youthful descriptions of the 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 175 


Highlands: “His views of Scotland appear as the scenes of 
Salvator Rosa would do, were they copied by Claude, whose 
sweet and lovely imagination would throw fine colours on the 
darkest parts, and give grace to the rudest objects.” 


3 

The most important connection of Lyttelton with the pic- 
turesque was his being the correspondent to whom “ the ingenious 
Dr. Brown” of the Estimate wrote a letter about Keswick 
which apparently everyone read; for it is referred to frequently 
in the periodicals as familiar. It was printed in Pearch’s Sup- 
plement to Dodsley’s Miscellany in 1768, as a note to Dr. 
Dalton’s Descriptive Poem. This letter played a part in making 
the lake scenery famous; and appears to be the first important 
published work on the picturesque. Printed at Newcastle in 
1767, it must have been written before 1760, the date of Brown’s 
quarrel with Lyttelton, and probably before 1756, when he had 
not yet been appointed to the living in Essex, but was still in 
the Lake region. The description contains the favorite elements 
of romance, horror, Thomson, and painting; 


At Keswick you will, on one side of the lake, see a rich and beautiful 
landskip of cultivated fields, rising to the eye in fine inequalities, with 
noble groves of oak happily dispersed; and clinging to the adjacent 
hills, shade above shade, in the most various and picturesque forms. 
On the opposite shore, you will find rocks and cliffs of stupendous height, 
hanging broken over the lake in horrible grandeur, some of them a 
thousand feet high, the woods climbing up their steep and shaggy sides. 

A variety of waterfalls are seen pouring from their summits, and 
tumbling in vast sheets from rock to rock, in rude and terrible magnifi- 
cence, while on all sides of this mimic amphitheatre the lofty mountains 
rise around, piercing the clouds... . 

. The full perfection of Keswick consists of three circumstances, 
beauty, horror, and immensity united. To give you a complete idea of 
these three perfections . . . would require the united powers of Claude, 
Salvator and Poussin. The first should throw his delicate sunshine 
over the cultivated vales, the scattered cots, the groves, the lakes and 
wooded islands. The second should dash out the horrors of the rugged 
cliffs, the steeps, the hanging rocks and foaming waterfalls, while the 
grand pencil of Poussin should crown the whole, with the majesty 
of an impending mountain. 

. I would point out the perpetual change of prospect: the woods, 
rocks, cliffs, and mountains, by turns vanishing or rising into view: now 


176 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


gaining on the sight, hanging over our heads in their full dimensions, 
beautifully dreadful; and now ... assuming new romantic shapes. . .. 


Another bit of evidence for the increasing picturesque vision 
is a plate in the British Magazime for June, 1761, of the view 
from the Star and Garter at Richmond, with accompanying Re- 
flections, beginning thus: 


The assemblage of objects, known by the name of landscape, is so 
interesting to the eye, and affecting to the imagination, that when nature 
did not supply sufficient variety to regale the faculty of sight and the 
power of fancy, the most eminent painters have employed their talents in 
exhibiting artificial views and prospects in which the great and sublime, 
the gay and agreeable, objects of inanimate nature are variously com- 
bined, so as to furnish an infinite fund of entertainment, according to 
the different dispositions of the human mind. At one moment the imagi- 
nation loves to contemplate the awful scenes of solitary nature, such as 
stupendous rocks, gloomy forests, and louring skies; sometimes to sur- 
vey the terrible . . . the tumbling ruin, the oak up-torn, the blackening 
cloud, and gleaming lightning. Those are scenes that strike the soul 
with a kind of pleasing horror, and fill it with sublime ideas of great- 
ness and immensity. Such were the subjects that employed the pencil 
of the celebrated Salvator Rosa, in contra-distinction to the more mildly 
pleasing scenes which rose from the labours of a Poussin and Claude 
Lorrain, according to those lines of the poet, 


Whate’er Lorrain light touch’d with soft’ning hue, 
Or savage Rosa dash’d, or learned Poussin drew. 


The appearance of Burke’s Inquiry into the Origin of our 
Ideas of the Sublime or Beautiful (1756, second enlarged edition 
1757) had a good deal of influence in arousing aesthetic per- 
ception of scenery, though Burke does not enter into discussion 
of the picturesque. But his remarks upon smoothness as per- 
haps the most essential attribute of the beautiful, with the neces- 
sary corollary that roughness belongs to the sublime, had great 
effect on Gilpin and Price. 

In 1760 the influence of Salvator was reinforced by that of. 
Ossian. The descriptions in Ossian are brief and hazy, but the 
dark woods, lonely heaths, mountain streams, green hills, mossy 
rocks, gray torrents, and storm-bent trees are impressive from 
sheer repetition. Isaac Taylor’s vignettes in the first editions 
are very suggestive of Salvator’s influence. How impressive 
was Ossian to the sentimental soul we may learn from Miss 


































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































THE CASCADE. 


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the Houghton Collecti 


in 


in 


ting by Gaspar Pouss 


e pain 


Engraved by Vivares after th 





THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 177 


Seward. “ In my sixteenth year,” says she, “I first read Ossian. 
If I did not dance for joy . . . I wept for joy.” But she could 
not proceed with it long at a sitting; for the imagination “ will 
not bear the protraction of unrelieved sublimity.” She prides 
herself on possessing sublimity as birthright. “Born amidst 
the highest of the Peak mountains, and passing the first seven 
years of my life surrounded by the wild grandeur of that scenery, 
it seized my first affection. Hence the landscapes of Ossian 
charm me more than those of more cultivated, more luxurious 
countries.” ‘ The first objects that met my infant glance, and 
impressed me with their lonely and romantic grandeur, were 
the mountains, the rocks, and the vales of Derbyshire. .. . 
Poetic descriptions and pencilled resemblances please me best 
when they take the Salvatorial style. This early established 
predilection steeps my eyes in the dews of pensive transport, 
when they stray over the pages of Ossian.” But she would 
not have them stray long at a time. ‘‘ We should look atten- 
tively at his landscapes, but not consider them for a much 
longer time than we could, without weariness, gaze at a land- 
scape of Claude’s, or Salvator’s.” 

She is constantly viewing scenery through the medium of 
pictures. Her native village, Eyam, “ boasts a Salvatorial dale 
and glen” ; again, she wishes “ for a Claude, and Salvatorial 
pencil, to delineate ‘“‘ her native rocks and hills, their romantic 
beauties and sterner graces.” We hear of “the Salvatorial 
features of Mr. Roberts’ situation,” and “ the Claude-landscapes 
of Langollen’s vale.” The vale of Stow “ glows sunny through 
the Claude-Lorain-tint, which is spread over the scene like blue 
mist over plumb.” When her friend Whalley travels in Switzer- 
land and sends back the usual descriptive letter, she thanks him 
fervidly: “Oh, my beloved friend, through what magnificent 
and beautiful scenery do you lead me! Were Claude, Poussin 
and Salvator now living, and were they also my partial friends; 
for my amusement were they to employ their magic pencil, 
and throw the scenes through which you have passed on their 
breathing canvas, . . . my imagination could not more forcibly 
receive the distinct ideas of their glowing beauty and astonishing | 
sublimity.” Her friend Major André evidently catches the 
contagion; he sends a poetic account of an autumn walk: 


178 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


“ Gilded hills, variegated woods, glittering spires, ruminating 
brook, bounding flocks, all combined to enchant the eyes.” ?° 

It is indicative of the general taste for scenery that we find in 
1765 such different persons as Smollett, Joseph Warton, and 
Wilkes writing impressions of it. Smollett is ill-pleased with 
Italian gardens. An Englishman looks to see in a park “a 
number of groves and glades intermixed with an agreeable 
negligence,” lawns, ponds, cascades, streams, clumps of trees, 
arbours, grottos, hermitages, temples, alcoves. The gardens 
of Italy lack the effect of rural simplicity which English gardens 
are designed to produce. He visits the waterfall at Terni, 
“ an object of tremendous sublimity,” though it loses effect from 
lack of a proper point of view. Joseph Warton, visiting Derby- 
shire, finds Matlock “of all earthly places the most exquisite 
and romantic, and beyond any possible description.” John 
Wilkes, travelling in Italy, notices “ picturesque ” views, recalls 
the beauty of his native greensward, though he admits that “ in 
England it is scarcely known what a fine blue arch of heaven is 
here, pure, serene, and unclouded,” and visits the Grande Char- 
treuse. There he writes in the album: “I had the happiness of 
passing the entire day of July 24, 1765, in this romantic place, 
with the good fathers of the Grande Chartreuse, and I reckon 
it among the most agreeable of my life.” So far we might 
assume merely the politeness of the conversable Wilkes; but 
his closing lines show how he too lay open to the sentiments 
of the picturesque-sublime: “ The savageness of the woods, the 
gloom of the rocks, and the perfect solitude, conspire to make 
the mind pensive, and to lull to rest all the turbulent guilty 
passions of the soul.”** It is easy to conceive of a modern 
politician as unscrupulous as Wilkes, and possible to think of 
one as clever, but to imagine one thus spreading his soul on the 
pages of a visitor’s book is an effort which brings sharply to mind 
the change in sentimental fashions. 

Another proof of this lies in the Tours of Arthur Young, who 
travelled for purposes economic and agricultural, but seems most 
to enjoy describing scenery and visiting picture galleries; he is 


10 Seward, Poet. Works, II, 97-08. 

11 Correspondence, 1805, II, 183-184. Fox was also “a very exquisite 
judge of the picturesque”; as well as something of a landscape gardener. 
Thomson, Recollections of Literary Characters, 1854, I, 120. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 179 


commended by the critics for his attention to the polite arts. He 
is something of an artist himself, though his cascades in the 
Northern Tour do look rigid. It is amusing that the predecessor 
of Gray in picturesque touring should be one whose primary in- 
terest was in crops. But even from “ Mr. Tucker’s cabbage 
field ” he can see a view; “I would at any time with the utmost 
pleasure, ride forty miles to view such another. ... Three 
rivers wind through it, . . . lost in some places among the trees, 
and break upon the eye in others, in a stile of picturesque ele- 
gance.” Young’s first Tour, through the southern counties, was 
published in 1768. The descriptions of scenes are largely views 
of grounds. Mr. Hamilton’s park at Cobham is manifestly in 
the style of Gaspar Poussin, though Young does not say so. 
He describes a view through an artificial ruined arch: “ The 
river appears winding in a proper manner; that is, dark and 
gloomy, around a rough piece of grass, which has a consistent 
appearance. But what hurt me very much, was the contradic- 
tion of emotions, raised by the scene behind; . . . elegant and 
agreeable; a smooth water, and sloping banks, closely shaven, 
with a little island in it, are all agreeable objects; and by no 
means affect the spectator in unison with the ruin of Grecian 
architecture, and the gloomy objects around.” He finds this 
place one of beauty; but Persfield, on the Wye, is sublime. He 
describes it at length, apologizing for inadequacy: “ A landscape 
too beautiful for such a daubing pencil as mine to paint; Mr. 
Dodsley—with his dingells, and such expressive terms, might 
make amends for the want of a Claud Loraine.” At one view, 
his pen drops from his hand: “No, my good friend, the eyes 
of your imagination are not keen enough to take in this point, 
which the united talents of a Claude, a Poussin, a Vernet, and 
a Smith, would scarcely be able to sketch.” After his enthusi- 
astic account he suggests a few deficiencies, chiefly the want of 
contrast: “ For the general emotions which arise on viewing 
the rocks, the hanging woods, and deep precipices of Persfield, 
are all those of the sublime; and when that is the case, the 
beautiful never appears in such bewitching colours, as those it 
receives from contrast: to turn suddenly from one of these ro- 
mantic walks, and break full upon a beautiful landscape, with- 


180 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


out any intermixture of rocks, distant prospect, or any object 
that was great or terrible, ... would be a vast improvement 
here.” What he would like would be “Small elegant buildings, 
in a light and airy taste, rising from green and gently swelling 
slopes, . . . and situated so that the sun may shine full upon 
them,’ — in other words, a Sibyl’s temple or so. 

The Tour of the North, taken in 1768, has more descriptions 
of natural scenes, along with the ornamented grounds. One of 
the last is clearly Italian in style, with “an Ionic temple, com- 
manding a noble variety of prospect and landscape; The former is 
seen to the left picturesquely, broken by large trees near the temple 
itself: A little to the right of that a vast extent of country; 
then you look down upon a valley, winding at the bottom of a 
noble amphitheatre of hanging woods, ~...and at the other 
end of the terrass, a tuscan colonnade temple. ... The valley 
. . . the meanders of the river, .. . the cascade almost over- 
hung with the pendant wood, . . . the tuscan temple crowning a 
bank of wood, form together a distant landscape in which every 
object is such as the warmest fancy could wish for, or the cor- 
rectest taste approve.” The Yorkshire moors give him many 
pleasing encounters with “ the terrible sublime.”’ Once he finds 
an enchanting landscape “as if dropt from heaven in the midst 
of this wild desart. . . . Would to heaven I could unite in one 
sketch the chearfulness of Zuccarelli, with the gloomy terrors 
of Pousin [sic], the glowing brilliancy of Claud, with the ro- 
mantic wildness of Salvator Rosa.” At Studley he digresses on 
the subject of ruins. A ruin ought to be in a retired, neglected 
spot, half filled with rubbish, the habitation of bats, owls, and 
wild beasts. ‘This horrible wildness greatly strengthens the 
idea raised by falling walls, ruined columns, and imperfect 
arches: both are awful, and impress upon the mind a kind of 
religious melancholy.” Ruins generally appear best at a dis- 
_ tance; and approach to them should be difficult; in fact, to 
some parts, impossible, so that the imagination may have room 
to range in. As for an artificial ruin, it should be in exact 
imitation of a real one; for this reason it should never serve a 
festive purpose, but should be allowed to inspire ideas of melan- 
choly unimpeded. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 181 


How consciously he viewed scenes with a picture-making eye 
is shown by his account of Hackfall, Mr. Aislabie’s other estate: 
“the outline of the picture is noble; but the filling up of the 
canvass adds a colouring more than equal to the pencil of 
a Claud.” One little amphitheatre scene “ may not be admired 
by those who are fond only of the great, but to such as are 
pleased with the soft tints of nature’s pencil,—with the mild 
glow of Vernet as well as the majesty of Poussin, this landscape 
will yield pure enjoyment.” Near Cocken (where two of Sal- 
vator’s landscapes were to be seen in the house) “the wild 
imagination of Salvator has scarcely pictured any thing more 
striking, or in a more splendid stile, than this variety of wood 
breaking forth from the craggy clifts and chasms of these noble 
rocks. This intermixture of rocks and wood is truly romantic 
and picturesque.” The Lake country moves him to impassioned 
raptures. The boldly indented shore of Winandermere is 
“skirted with spreading trees, an edging as elegant as ever fan- 
cied by Claud himself.” 

His Eastern Tour, published in 1771, gives many descriptions 
of grounds. Newstead Abbey has a fine lake, with two castles 
on its banks, “ uncommon, tho’ picturesque; it seems rather 
unfortunate that the cannon should be levelled at the palace 
windows.” He fears that Brown’s improvements at Roche Abbey 
may spoil the effect by raising a cheerful idea. As Young saw 
them, the cliffs “are spread with thick woods that throw a 
solemn gloom over the whole, and breathe a browner horror on 
every part of the scene. All is wild, and romantic. ... Every 
part unites to raise melancholy ideas; perhaps the most power- 
ful, of which the human soul is capable.” The Tour in Ireland 
suffered by the loss of Young’s notes; though it would never be 
guessed from his full and frequent descriptions of landscape. 
His Travels in France have less to do with scenery; but he gets 
much pleasure from the Pyrenees, and finds at Montauban fea- 
tures “ which Claude Lorain would not have failed transfixing 
on his canvass.” 

Gray, though his work on the subject was but the rough notes 
of a fortnight’s walking tour in the Lakes in 1769, was more 
influential upon the picturesque tourist than Young with all 
his thirteen volumes. The notes, published with Gray’s other 


182 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


letters in 1775, were read by every person of taste, and played 
no little part in making the Lake country fashionable touring 
ground. Already it was the haunt of artists; the eccentric Chate- 
lain had copied it, and Gray tells of being at the same inn where 
Vivares, Smith, and Bellers had stayed. As sole companion, after 
Wharton fell ill and failed him, Gray had his Claude-glass, “a 
plano-convex mirror, of about four inches diameter, on a black 
foil, and bound up like a pocket-book.” 12 The reflections of 
scenery in this, from the convexity and dark ground, showed 
the objects as if painted, with composition and lowered tone. 
Foliage and rocks are especially effective in the Claude-glass. 
Nothing is more characteristic of Gray, or of his age, than his 
thus translating Keswick and Borrowdale into the four-inch 
darkened picture of his glass, in order to have fullest pleasure 
from them. He refers to it several times: 


On the ascent of the hill above Appleby, the thick hanging wood & the 
long reaches of the Eden . . . winding below with views of the Castle 
& Town gave much employment to the mirror. . . 

Cross’d the meadows obliquely, catching a diversity of views among the 
hills over the lake & island and changing prospect at every ten paces 

. near the food of Walla-crag . . . the most delicious view, that my 
eyes ever beheld. behind you are the magnificent heights of Walla-crag ; 
opposite lie the thick hanging woods of Ld Egremont, & Newland Valley, 
with green & smiling fields embosom’d in the dark cliffs ...to the 
left the turbulent chaos of mountain behind mountain roll’d in con- 
fusion; beneath you... the shining purity of the Lake, just ruffled 
by the breeze enough to shew it alive, reflecting rocks, woods, fields, & 
inverted tops of mountains, with the white buildings of Keswick, 
Crosthwait-church & Skiddaw for a back ground at a distance. oh! 
Doctor! I never wish’d more for you; & pray think, how the glass 
play’d its part in such a spot. 


At Kirkstall Abbey, where ivy, and roots of sturdy trees en- 
croach upon the ruins, “the gloom of these ancient cells, the 
shade & verdure of the landscape, the glittering & murmur of 
the stream, the lofty towers & long perspectives of the church, 
. . . detain’d me for many hours, & were the truest subjects for 
my glass I have yet met with.” Once he fell down with the 
glass open in his hand; but luckily broke only his knuckles. 
It is not necessary to give more of his pictures; they are well 


12 Mason’s note, 1775, Pp. 352. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 183 


known. Always he shows a sense of pictorial composition, and 
of light and shade, strongly suggestive of the paintings of the 
Italian landscape school. 

The next summer he spent six weeks with Norton Nicholls in 
a tour of the border counties, “five of the most beautiful 
counties in England,” and went down the Wye in a boat; “‘its 
banks are a succession of nameless wonders! one out of many 
you may see not ill described by Mr Whateley [sic] in his 
Observations on Gardening under the name of the New Weir; 
he has also touched upon two others, Tinterne-Abbey, and 
Persfield.” Of the five regions of Britain most haunted by 
the lovers of the picturesque, Gray noticed four. (He does 
not describe North Wales.) The Peak he did not like, “a 
country beyond comparison, uglier than any other I have seen 
in England, black, tedious, barren, & not mountainous enough 
to please one with its horrors.” As to the Highlands, he writes 
to Palgrave in 1758: “I congratulate you on your new ac- 
quaintance with the savage, the rude, and the tremendous. 
Pray, tell me, is it anything like what you had read in your 
book, or seen in two-shilling prints?”’ In 1765 he went there 
himself: “The mountains are ecstatic, and ought to be visited 
in pilgrimage once a year. None but those monstrous creatures 
of God know how to join so much beauty to so much horror. 
A fig for your poets, painters, gardeners and clergymen” (he 
is writing to Mason, who is all four) “ that have not been among 
them; their imagination can be made up of nothing but bowl- 
ing-greens, flowering shrubs, horse-ponds, Fleet ditches, shell 
grottoes, and Chinese rails.” 


4 


The Reverend Mr. Gilpin made his picturesque tour of the 
Wye the same year that Gray made his. It was the encourage- 
ment of Gray, and later of Mason, that finally induced the 
timid and impecunious gentleman to publish his remarks and 
sketches, some fifteen years after he made the first of them. 
His Essay on Prints, printed in 1768, ten years after it was 
written, had been received with warm approbation. In the 
meantime he was each year adding to his accumulation, made 


184 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


in his vacation pilgrimages to the various parts of Britain. 
There is something engaging about Gilpin: his anxiety that the 
study of picturesque beauty shall not be deemed unsuitable 
to the vocation of a clergyman, his deference to his critics, at 
the same time that he holds firmly to certain opinions, as for 
example that upon the character of Charles II, his conscientious 
alterations of nature to bring it more into accord with the 
principles of the picturesque, his very oddities of style, such as 
the constantly recurring z¢’s and the quaint distribution of 
italics. ‘‘ A humane, tolerant, ingenious, benevolent man,” his 
friend Samuel Pratt calls him. He was a schoolmaster of ex- 
cellent ideas; and when he received from his former pupil, the 
historian Mitford, a living at Boldre in the New Forest, he set 
about to remedy the conditions of ignorance and squalor which 
he found among his parishioners by establishing a school. It 
was this school which the profits of his books went to support; 
his desire to help it overcame his fears of failure. For a num- 
ber of years his remarks and sketches were passed about, in 
manuscript, under the supervision of Mason. Walpole, Mrs. 
Delany, the Duchess of Portland, the Reverend Michael Tyson, 
are among those who were interested. Tyson industriously 
copied the sketches, which he admired, though he could not see 
that they resembled their orginals. He thought the remarks 
admirable, “but yet a book only of Picturesque Beauty is to me 
as palling as a Dinner made up of Plumb-cake, Trifle, and 
Caraway Comfits. But mark me, I had rather have Gilpin’s 
Plumb-Cake than Pennant’s hard Dumplings.” For more than 
ten years Gilpin’s work had only such private circulation. “I 
wish I cow’d steal (for fear I shall never influence),” sighs Mrs. 
Delany, “ out of the mischievous banks at the gaming tables 
four or five hundred pounds, and bestow it upon a work that 
wou’d do honour, not only to the very worthy and ingenious 
author, but to the country which he lives in.”” The Duchess of 
Portland offered to assist in the publication, but Gilpin, sensi- 
tive in his poverty, would not accept her generosity. 

At last, encouraged by his friends, especially by Mason, he 
began to publish, by Mason’s advice taking first a small volume, 
the Observations on the River Wye, made in 1770, rather than 
one of his more elaborate works. The attempt, in 1782, was 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 185 


successful; by 1800 the book had gone into a fifth edition, 
and appeared besides in a small form suitable for a guide-book. 
There followed the series of elaborately printed volumes on the 
Lakes, on the Highlands, on the New Forest, and forest scenery, 
on the southwest counties, the Isle of Wight, the southern coast, 
the eastern counties, and north Wales. Two of the volumes 
appeared after Gilpin’s death in 1804. The fact that the early 
editions were small, and quickly exhausted may have helped 
to enhance his reputation. “The first edition of this elegant 
work,” says the Monthly Review, of the Observations on the 
Lakes, “eluded the vigilance of our collector by the rapidity of 
its sale, the whole impression having been bought up in a few 
days.” 78 

By picturesque beauty Gilpin means, as has been said, simply 
“that kind of beauty which would look well in a picture.” In ar- 
riving at decisions as to what scenes are “correctly picturesque,” 
it is clear that he has in mind the landscape art which is most 
admired by his age. Nature and picturesque considerations 
sometimes clash; he is generous enough to suggest that this is 
due to the vast scale on which nature works. The artist, on 
the other hand, “is confined to a span; and lays down his little 
rules, which he calls the principles of picturesque beauty, merely 
to adapt such diminutive parts of nature’s surface to his own 
eye as come within its scope.— Hence, therefore, the painter 
who adheres strictly to the composition of nature, will rarely 
make a good picture.”?4 The confusion between picturesque 

13 Gilpin’s picturesque works are: 

Observations on the River Wye and several Parts of South Wales, &c. 
relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, 1782. 

Observations on ... the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland and West- 
moreland ... 1786. 

Observations on Several Parts of Great Britain, particularly the High-lands 
of Scotland, . . . 1780. 

Remarks on Forest Scenery .. . illustrated by Scenes of the New Forest, 


L701, 

Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel; and on 
Sketching Landscape, 1792. 

Observations on the Western Parts of England... . Remarks on the Isle 
of Wight .. . 1798. 

Observations on the Coasts of Hampshire, Sussex, and Kent .. . 1804. 

Observations on... the Counties of Cambridge, Norfolk, Suffolk and 
Essex. ... Also on several Parts of North Wales . . . 1809. 

4 Wye, fifth ed., pp. 30-31. 


186 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


and romantic he attempts to clear in his remarks on Arthur’s 
Seat, which is “‘ romantic but not picturesque,” — for it is “ odd, 
misshapen, and uncouth; and a view with such a staring fea- 
ture in it, can no more be picturesque, than a face with a bul- 
bous nose can be beautiful.”” To distinguish the beautiful from 
the picturesque he finds the principle of roughness, following 
Burke.1> Though he had not travelled abroad, he was sure that 
England “exceeds most countries in the variety of its pic- 
turesque beauties.” River-views were his favourites. If per- 
fect, they had “four grand parts: the area, which is the river 
itself; the two side-screens, which are the opposite banks, and 
lead the perspective; and the front screen, which points out the 
windings of the river.” He had fixed views on the grouping of 
cattle. Two cows will hardly combine. ‘“ With three, you are 
sure of a good group, except indeed they all stand in the same 
attitude and at equal distances.” Price tells of a person of pic- 
turesque proclivities, who, when his prudent wife suggested that 
two of their three cows would suffice for their needs, replied, 
“Lord, my dear, two cows you know can never group.” | 

Gilpin made some use of Claude Lorrain glasses. He seems 
to have known a different kind from that used by Gray, and 
still employed; he describes them as “combined of two or 
three different colours; and if the hues are well sorted, they 
give the object of nature a soft, mellow tinge, like the colouring 
of that master,” as well as greater depth to the shades. This 
seems to be the kind that Scott refers to in Redgauntlet, “ which 
spreads its own particular hue over the landscape you see 
through it.” But Gilpin used the mirror, also, and especially 
enjoyed its changing pictures, when he was riding in a chaise. 
“They are like the visions of the imagination; or the brilliant 
landscapes of a dream. Forms, and colours in brightest array, 
fleet before us; and if the transient glance of a good composi- 
tion happen to unite with them, we should give any price to 
fix and appropriate the scene.” 

Gilpin does not often compare real landscapes to painted 
ones, though he plainly has in mind the painted ones in admiring 


15 Sydney Smith was probably thinking of this in his famous distinction: 
“The rector’s horse is beautiful, the curate’s is picturesque.” Lockhart’s Life 
of Scott, Chap. XV—Mr. W. P. Ker, in The Art of Poetry, 1923, notices 
these passages in the definition of romantic and picturesque, p. 78. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 187 


real ones. The withered and shattered tree is justified as 
picturesque by Salvator Rosa’s use of it; and the chestnut “ is 
consecrated” by adorning his foregrounds. Berghem is a fa- 
vourite, of whom he is reminded at Windermere, by cattle stand- 
ing before a rock, and at Kenilworth, where “cattle and ruins 
adorn each other.” ‘The influence of the Italian painters shows 
in his preference for river views, either grand, or as the “scene 
of rural pleasure” ; for sharp contrasts of light and shade, 
chiaroscuro; for darkened foregrounds; for an extensive dis- 
tance, “ one of the greatest beauties of nature” ; and especially 
for banditti as ornaments to landscape. The approach to Dun- 
mail Raise is unhappily without these last adornments, though 
so “ well adapted to the perpetration of some dreadful deed.” 
The gentle clergyman sighs that “ moral and picturesque ideas 
do not always coincide.” 


In a moral view, the industrious mechanic is a more pleasing subject 
than the loitering peasant. But in a picturesque light, it is otherwise. . . 
The lazy cowherd, resting on his pole, . . . may be allowed in the grand- 
est scene; while the laborious mechanic, with his instruments of labour, 
would be repulsed... . 

The characters, which are most suited to these scenes of grandeur, 
are such as impress us with some idea of greatness, wildness, or feroc- 
ity; all which touch on the sublime. Figures in long, flowing draperies; 
gypsies; banditti; and soldiers, not in modern regimentals; but as Virgil 
paints them, ‘‘Longis adnixi hastis, et scuta tenentes;”... For the 
truth of all these remarks, I might appeal to the decisive judgment of 
Salvator Rosa. 


Gilpin has a comical fashion of treating nature as an artist 
of genius, but untrained and requiring correction. ‘She touches 
every object with spirit. Her general colouring, and her local 
hues, are exquisite. In composition only she fails.” To be 
sure, the seeming failure may be explained because she works on 
so vast a plan. But it is generally necessary for the human 
artist to use his imagination, to cull from nature the most 
beautiful parts, and remove the offensive. Even if you wish 
for the picture of a particular scene, you must allow the artist 
to make certain changes, especially such as might be made in 
the actual objects, like planting or removing trees, or changing 
the course of a road. Thus in representing Conway Castle 


188 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 181x CENTURY ENGLAND 


and the scenery about it, where nature’s composition is incor- 
rect, you should introduce only part of the castle, cut down the 
heavy wood, and plant a tree or two in the foreground. Castles 
are rarely found just as they should be for picturesque purposes ; 
in spite of the efforts of Cromwell upon which Gilpin makes a 
mild jest: ‘“ What share of picturesque genius Cromwell might 
have had, I know not;—JI have seen many pieces by this 
master, executed in a very grand style.” Rarely Gilpin re- 
marks on a natural scene “correctly picturesque,’ as is Good- 
rich Castle, on the Wye. 

He has much to say of the embellished scene, though he ac- 
counts it unfit for picturesque representation. The number of 
his descriptions shows how prevailing was the taste for land- 
scape gardening, and his frank strictures on such as seem to 
him in poor taste, like Studley and Ford Abbey, forecast the 
severity of Price and Knight. He stands between them and 
Walpole and Mason in his view of Brown. When Brown deals 
with a ruin, as at Roche Abbey, Gilpin protests. As to artificial 
ruins, he is open-minded. He seems to approve of ruins placed at 
a distance, to make an object in a picture, but ruins near at 
hand, and to be walked around, are risky ventures. ‘ When it 
is well done, we will allow that nothing can be more beautiful; 
but we see everywhere so many absurd attempts of this kind, 
that when we walk through a piece of improved ground; and 
hear the next of being carried to see the ruins ... we dread 
the encounter.” 

Gilpin’s fondness for a high style (of course he admired Os- 
sian), and his mixture of poetic vocabulary with technical jargon 
of side-screens, foreground, and distances, was found ridiculous 
by some readers, even in his own time. But his descriptions, if 
flowery, are often admirably vivid and painter-like; for ex- 
ample: 

Our approach to Wells, from the natural and incidental beauties of 
the scenery, was uncommonly picturesque. It was a hazy evening; and 
the sun, declining low, was hid behind a purple cloud, which covered 
half the hemisphere, but did not reach the western horizon. Its lower 
skirts were gilt with dazzling splendor, which spread downwards, not in 
diverging rays, but in one uniform ruddy glow; and uniting at the 


bottom with the mistiness of the air, formed a rich, yet modest tint, 
with which Durcote-hill projecting boldly on the left, the towers of 


‘uidjig Aq urenby 


‘dVEHUNOLS LV NOAHINVG IHL, 





a 








THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 189 


Wells behind it, and all the objects of the distance, were tinged; while 
the foreground, seen against so bright a piece of scenery, was over- 
spread with the darkest shades of evening. ‘The whole together invited 
the pencil, without soliciting the imagination. But it was a transitory 
scene. As we stood gazing at it, the sun sunk below the cloud, and being 
stripped of all its splendor by the haziness of the atmosphere, fell, like 
a ball of fire, into the horizon, and the whole radiant vision faded 
away. 


Though Gilpin’s works did not begin appearing till 1782, 
they had considerable influence, as has been intimated, through 
their circulation in manuscript. On their appearance, they 
were greeted with warm enthusiasm. The reviewers treat Gil- 
pin with a respectful deference which must have delighted 
his anxious soul, and such occasional carping as is found directs 
itself against the costliness of his productions and the doubtful 
value of the numerous aquatints which caused the costliness. 
These aquatints are to us the best evidence, in their quaint and 
rather delightful unreality, of the distinction he made between 
“the principles of Picturesque Beauty” and the reality of 
nature. Even the costliness of his volumes—they were usually 
thirty-one shillings, for the larger works— is appropriate; for 
the picturesque view was mainly a luxury of the leisure class, 
an elegant accessory of life; and if the price added to the sums 
which Gilpin was gathering for his school at Boldre in the New 
Forest, so much the better. 


5 
Gilpin’s Observations were largely made in the seventies, a 

period when the pleasures of the picturesque were confined to 
a more limited circle than later, after he was publishing. But 
it was a rapidly increasing circle, even then. He did not so 
much create a taste as satisfy a taste already existing. Not a 
few minor poets, of whom John Scott of Aimwell is representa- 
tive, were pointedly picturesque. Scott writes in Aimwell: a 
Descriptive Poem (1776): 

How various is yon view! delicious hills 

Bounding smooth vales, smooth vales by winding streams 

Divided, that here glide thro grassy banks 


In open sun, there wander under shade 
Of aspen tall, or ancient elm, whose boughs 


190 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


O’erhang grey castles, and romantic farms. ... 
How picturesque the view! where up the side 
Of that steep bank, the roofs of russet thatch 
Rise mix’d with trees, above whose swelling tops 
Ascends the tall church tow’r, and loftier still 
The hill’s extended ridge: how picturesque! 
Where slow beneath the bank the silver stream 
Glides by the flowery isle .. . 

. . . How picturesque 
The slender group of airy elm, the clump 
Of pollard oak, or ash, with ivy brown 
Entwin’d, 


and calls on the artists to picture these scenes under the rays 
of rising or of setting sun, though it require 


The skill of CLAUDE, or RuBENS, or of Him [2.e., George Smith] 
Whom now on Lorant’s banks, in groves that breathe 
Enthusiasm sublime, the Sister Nymphs 

Inspire. 7] 


Anthony Champion, pupil of Walter Harte, wrote in 1772 a 
poem comparing Wales and the Highlands. As for the Highlands, 


Claud’s colours there, and Virgil’s style are faint — 
Let Churchill’s pen, and Rosa’s pencil paint; 


whereas in Wales 


How elegant the woods, the streams and shades. ... 
Yon villa’s site, Italia’s taste might please. . 


Though they do not use the word in describing their travels 
— Boswell is fonder of romantic — both Boswell and Johnson 
show symptoms of picturesque vision. To be sure, Boswell 
says he had little taste for “rural beauties,” and thought that 
Johnson had not much. But Boswell enjoys castles and ruins, 
though from literary and historical rather than pictorial asso- 
ciations. He visited the falls of Terni (perhaps in company with 
Wilkes) 1® and his journey to Corsica is ‘“ romantick,” if not 
picturesque as well. He takes “romantick” satisfaction in 
beholding his great friend in Macbeth’s castle; Dunvegan, he 
thinks, lends a rude magnificence to the scene; Roslin is “ro- 


16 This is Mr. Tinker’s suggestion. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE IgI 


mantick” ; and as for Auchinleck, he cannot figure a more 
romantick scene.’’. “ The sullen dignity of the old castle,” was 
Johnson’s phrase. Johnson went to Scotland decidedly in pic- 
turesque mood; he sought ‘wild objects,— mountains, — 
waterfalls, — peculiar manners.” He is amiably disposed to 
grottos, though he refuses to visit the park of Lord Findlater. 
He thinks the situation of Slanes Castle the noblest he has ever 
seen — nobler even than Mount Edgecumbe —and would will- 
ingly have beheld from it “ the terrifick grandeur of the tem- 
pestuous ocean.”’ At the Fall of Fiers, he says: “ the country at 
the bridge strikes the imagination with all the gloom and 
grandeur of Siberian solitude” ; and the Buller of Buchan rouses 
agreeable horrors. ‘“ But terror without danger is only one of 
the sports of fancy, a voluntary agitation of the mind, that is 
permitted no longer than it pleases.’’ Nor are objects of terror 
the only ones to entertain him; he expresses “‘ a pastoral pleasure 
on seeing the goats browzing.” 

The few notes of his journey into Wales the next summer 
have more talk of scenery than the pages of both the Journal 
and the Journey; suggesting that even Johnson was subject to 
the contagion of picturesque enthusiasm felt by his companions. 
Mr. Thrale “ loved a prospect” ; and as loving prospects was a 
fashionable sentiment, of course Mrs. Thrale did. Though 
Johnson teased Thrale by insisting that a blade of grass was 
always a blade of grass, whether in one country or another, and 
though his sight was defective, he could attend to scenery; 
witness the account of Ilam which he gave to Boswell. His 
fearful joy in wild scenes is shown at Sir Rowland Hill’s, “a 
region abounding with striking scenes and terrifick grandeur.” 
He notices “the extent of its prospects, the awfulness of its 
shades, the horrors of its precipices, the verdure of its hollows, 
and the loftiness of its rocks; the ideas which it forces upon 
the mind are, the sublime, the dreadful and the vast.... He 
that mounts the precipices at Hawkestone ... has not the 
tranquillity, but the horror, of solitude; a kind of turbulent 
pleasure, between fright and admiration.” The castles please 
him. Ruthin is “a very noble ruin.” Beaumaris “ corresponds 
withall the representations of romancing narratives.” Regard- 
ing his friend Dr. Taylor’s artificial ruins, at Ashbourn, he seems 


192 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


to have preserved discreet silence. There were two, a hovel 
faced with stone, representing a castle; and a smaller castle on 
a hill, backed by an old tree, to “terminate the prospect.” 
These were placed according to the rules of perspective, we 
are assured by one R. J. in the London Magazine for 1778; and 
had a most pleasing effect. It is a pity we have not Dr. John- 
son’s ideas regarding them. His pleasure in castles, and preci- 
pices, was more poetical than pictorial; but then, much of the 
picturesque tourist’s pleasure was, and, as I have said, no little 
of the pleasure felt in landscape painting itself. 


6 


In a style even more florid and poetic than Gilpin’s is William 
Hutchinson’s Excursion to the Lakes (1776). Hutchinson is 
an example of the combination of antiquary and picturesque 
observer. He and his brother, who drew his pictures, were 
collecting material for an antiquarian volume; but they revelled 
in scenery. They had Dr. Brown’s letter in hand before visiting 
Keswick ; and the influence of its manner is strong upon Hutch- 
inson. He too paints in words, like Gilpin, Gray, and Brown; 
witness this sunrise sketch in the manner of Claude: 


As the sun advanced, he gave various beauties to the scene, the 
beams streaming through the divisions in the mountains, shewed us their 
due perspective, and striped the plain with gold—the light falling be- 
hind the castle, presented all its parts perfectly to us—through the 
broken windows distant objects were discovered; — the front ground lay 
in shadows; — on the left the prospect was shut in by a range of craggy 
mountains, over whose steeps shrubs and trees were scattered; —to 
the right a fertile plain was extended, surmounted by distant hills; over 
their summits the retiring vapours, as they fled the valley, dragged their 
_ watery skirts, and gave a solemn gloom to that part of the scene. Be- 
hind the building, the lofty promontory of Wilbore Fell lifted its peaked 
brow, tinged with azure hue, and terminated the prospect. 


His account of Lodore introduces Thomson (“Smooth from 
the shelving brink,”) ; Mason (“ Vivid green, Warm brown and 
blake opake the foreground bears”); Claude (who “in his 
happiest hour never struck out a finer landskip; it has every 
requisite which the pencil can demand, and is perhaps the only 
view in England which can vie with the sublime scenes from 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 103 


which that painter formed his taste”); and Salvator: “ Moun- 
tain behind mountain, and rock behind rock, fell here in fine 
perspective, and brought to our minds those astonishing scenes 
which characterize the pencil of Salvator.” 

His taste is for the grand manner of the Italian landscape: 


When the long protracted shades the mountains cast upon the bosom 
of the lake, shewed the vastness of those masses from whence they pro- 
ceeded; and still as the moon arose higher in the horizon, the distant 
objects began to be more illumined, and the whole presented us with a 
noble moon-light piece, delicately touched by the hand of nature; and 
far surpassing those humble scenes which we had often viewed in the 
works of the Flemish painters. 


It is plain that he was something of a painter himself; and 
even more an admirer of paintings. He takes his cue from 
Brown thus: 


The lake of WINDERMERE differs very much from those of ULS-wATER 
and Keswick;— .. . The paintings of Pousin [szc] describe the noble- 
ness of ULS-wATER;—the works of SALvATOR Rosa express the 
romantic and rocky scene of Keswick;—and the tender and elegant 
touches of CLAUDE LORAINE, and SmiTH, pencil forth the rich variety of 
WINDERMERE. 


Somewhat coldly, the Monthly remarks: “The scenes here de- 
scribed are, indeed, worthy of all the powers which the pen or 
the pencil could contribute toward their due celebration; but 
the hand in which either is held, ought to be guided by the 
genius of a Titian, a Poussin, or a Claude.” 

Richard Cumberland, in his Odes (1776), refers to Gray, with 
astonishment that “this enchanting display of sublime and 
beautiful objects could extort nothing more than a prosaic de- 
scription from a poetical pen,” and clearly thinks that Dr. 
Brown is Gray’s superior, since to his famous letter he added 
a poem. Cumberland refers to the painters in his own de- 
scription of Ulswater: 


For neither Scottish Lomonp’s pride, 
Nor smooth KILiarRNey’s silver tide, 
Nor aught that learned Poussin drew, 
Or dashing Rosa flung upon my view 
Shall shake thy sovereign undisturbed right. 


194 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Exaggerated echo of this comes from William Cocker, in an 
Ode to the Genius of the Lakes, which was “ thrown in the way 
of tourists” : 


Though CLaupDE and Rosa join their utmost art, 
Though greater Brown his rich invention strain. 17 


A Guide to the Lakes, which was extremely popular (it went 
to a seventh edition in 1799) was published by Thomas West in 
1778. “To make the Tour of the Lakes, to speak in fashionable 
terms,” says the Monthly, “is the ton of the present hour.” 
West begins by attributing the great interest in the Lake 
country to interest in landscape painting; makes use of all the 
other writers on the Lakes,— Young, Pennant, Hutchinson; 
gives the letter of Brown, Gray’s Journal, Dr. Dalton’s De- 
scriptive Poem, Cumberland’s Ode to the Sun, and other litera- 
ture about the region. He recommends the use of the glass; 
in fact, of two glasses, one on dark foil for sunny days, and one 
on silver for cloudy weather. Perhaps of these two kinds were 
the “Claude Lorrain glasses” found in the pocket of that hap- 
less Charles Gough, dashed to pieces in the descent from Helvel- 
lyn, who, with his faithful dog, furnished a poetic subject for 
Wordsworth and for Scott. West plans his route so that it 
leads ‘‘ from what is pleasing, to what is surprising; from the 
delicate touches of Claude, verified on Coniston-lake, to the 
noble scenes of Poussin, exhibited on Windermere-water, and 
from there, to the stupendous romantic ideas of Salvator Rosa, 
realized in the lake of Derwent.” Again, “the conic summits of 
Langdale-pike —the far-extended mountain of Troutbeck ... 
form as magnificent an amphitheatre and as grand an as- 
semblage of mountain, dells, and chasms, as ever the fancy of 
Poussin suggested, or the genius of Rosa invented.” 

There was also the Survey of the Lakes (Penrith, 1787) by 
James Clarke, which was more critical of the flowery language 
of Hutchinson and Young, and gave Gray the credit of the best, 
because least pretentious, account; though he was blamed by the 
author for missing some of the best scenery, because of too great 
timidity. Another handbook was Joseph (later Palmer) Bud- 
worth’s Fortnight’s Ramble to the Lakes (1792). “It is now 


17 The Rural Sabbath, 1805, p. 148. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 195 


so meritoriously the fashion to make this tour,” is his excuse 
for publishing his trivial volume, “I dare almost say it will be 
thought want of taste not to be able to speak about it.” 

Books of picturesque tours were numerous in the last quarter 
of the century. It may be that the French Voyages Pittoresques 
helped to set the fashion for England, but it was a fashion in 
which the Englishman was at home. The various works of 
Thomas Pennant lack the “glowing scenes” of the truly 
picturesque writer; a defect which was often brought against 
them. But most of the other volumes of tours show the pictorial 
sense strongly developed; as the antiquarian Bray’s tour of 
Derbyshire and Yorkshire (1777) ; William Thompson’s tour of 
northern England and Scotland (1788); Hassell’s tour of the 
Isle of Wight (1790); the Reverend Stebbing Shaw’s tour of 
western England (1788) ; Skrine’s tours of Wales and of Scotland 
(1795); and such works on.counties as The Kentish Traveller’s 
Companion, which gives under Prospect in the index nineteen 
references, and that enormous folio, The New British Traveller, 
by George Augustus Walpoole, with numerous plates. 

Shaw refers to Gilpin’s work on the Wye as being so scarce 
at that time as to be hard to procure. He got it afterward, 
and thought “the hints and occasional descriptions of such a 
companion were highly desirable, and would have been of infinite 
assistance.” Hannah More, journeying down the Wye with the 
Wilberforces in 1789, has Gilpin’s book as companion as she 
writes to Walpole of “sailing down the beautiful river Wye, 
looking at abbeys, and castles, with Mr. Gilpin in my hand to 
teach me to criticise, and talk of foregrounds, and distances, and 
perspectives, and prominences, with all the cant of connoisseur- 
ship, and then to subdue my imagination, which had been not a 
little disordered with this enchanting scenery.” ‘I had rather 
wander in Forests with such an Author, than accompany a 
modern novel writer’s adventures,’ wrote Mrs. Elizabeth 
Montagu, in 1792. 

William Thompson’s Tour of England and Scotland (1788) 
refers to painting and to Thomson in right picturesque vein, 
describing “the romantic region of Borrowdale, where there is 
such a mixture of the tremendous and beautiful scenery as 
perhaps no other spot on earth can exhibit. To describe the com- 


196 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


ponent parts which form the wonderful whole, would require the 
genius of a Thomson or Salvator Rosa.” J. Hassell, in his Tour 
through the Isle of Wight (1790), is yet more a deliberate copyist 
of Gilpin, in price, in use of aquatints, and in language; in the 
last not successful, for he overdid the florid, and is reprehended 
by the reviewer for it, since such a book would “ probably fall 
into the hands of females,” but too ready to accept its style as 
their model. Hassell compares the scenes he views with the 
paintings of De Loutherbourg, Morland, and Gainsborough, 
showing an attempt to depart from the conventional formula; 
but once he goes back to Claude, describing a sunset over water. 

The English visitor to the continent carried the memory of 
the painters with him. So James Smith, the botanist, found at 
Ermenonville ‘scenes where even Salvator Rosa might have 
taken hints of wildness,” observed in travelling from Florence 
“several very rich and extended landscapes . . . with quite a 
Claude’s sky ”; near Capua passed through woods “ which would 
have made an admirable subject for Berghem, and the scenery 
around was worthy of the pencil of Ruysdael or Claude Lor- 
raine’’; and at Tivoli thought: “ Nothing can be more charming 
than these scenes ; no wonder they are so celebrated. Sometimes 
the landscape with the buildings of Tivoli, the temple, and the 
vast plain of Rome beyond, resembles a picture of Poussin’s; 
in other points of view, with the noble cascades and rocks, and 
the towering mountains above, it recalls the more majestic 
scenes of Salvator Rosa.” 18 Thomas Watkins saw in Altdorf and 
Urseren such a contrast as between “the rich fancy of Claude 
Lorrain ” and “the romantic genius of Salvator Rosa. If either 
of these great masters of painting had added anything, the one 
would probably have introduced a distant view of the sea with 
shipping, and the other gibbets of Banditti on an eminence.” ? 
Mrs. Radcliffe at Cologne beheld a sunset landscape, “in tints 
so soft, so clear, so delicately roseate, as Claude only could have 
painted.” 2° 


18 Sketch of a Tour on the Continent, 1793, I, 323-324, II, 132-133, 
291-292. 

19 Travels, 1792, I, 48. 

20 Journey, second ed., 1795, Il, 177. 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 197 
7 


It is amusing among the raptures of the amateur to come upon 
that disappointing experience which Dr. Adar and certain ladies 
had with Burns, whom they escorted to the Caldron Linn, and 
watched hopefully, to see a poet inspired by picturesque beauty. 
But Burns did not perform well. ‘I am surprised that none 
of these scenes should have called forth an exertion of Burns’ 
muse,” observed the Doctor; “ but I doubt if he had much taste 
for the picturesque.” The ladies were unhappy “at his not ex- 
pressing in more glowing fervid language his impressions of the 
Caldron Linn scene, certainly highly sublime, and somewhat 
horrible.” 

Coleridge would have satisfied the ladies better. When he took 
his walking tour in Wales, in 1794, he found the scenery “ most 
wild and romantic.” In the ruined castle at Denbigh he wan- 
dered for two hours on a still evening, ‘“‘ feeding on melancholy.” 
Two other travellers entered, ‘‘ well-dressed men.” Said one, “I 
will play on my flute; it will have a romantic effect.” — But let 
the deceived poet proceed with the story: 

“Bless thee, man of genius and sensibility,” I silently exclaimed. He 
sate down amid the most awful part of the ruins; the moon just began 
to make her rays predominant over the lingering daylight; I preattuned 
my feelings to emotion; and the romantic youth instantly struck up the 


sadly pleasing tunes of Miss Carey, The British Lion is my Sign, and 
A roaring trade I drive. 


Wordsworth attacked abuse of picturesque theory in The 
Prelude, Book XII: 


. . . Even in pleasure pleased 

Unworthily, disliking here, and there 
Liking; by rules of mimic art transferred 
To things above all art; } 


but characteristically congratulates himself on having escaped 
the worst of its effects: 


. .. For this 

Although a strong infection of the age, 
Was never much my habit,— giving way 
To a comparison of scene with scene, 
Bent overmuch on superficial things, 
Pampering myself with meagre novelties 
Of colour and proportion. 


198 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


8 


In the last decade of the century appeared several works on 
the theory of the picturesque. Uvedale Price’s Essays (1794) — 
chiefly directed toward picturesque gardening— have been 
noticed earlier. He attempts to establish for the theory aesthetic 
principles more definite than Gilpin’s. His main thesis, that the 
picturesque is a distinct quality from either the sublime or the 
beautiful (as to these he follows Burke with fidelity), he natu- 
rally finds some trouble in making clear. It is, he says, between 
the two. Roughness and sudden variation are its “ most efficient 
cause.” Thus, Gothic architecture is picturesque, Grecian beauti- 
ful; but Grecian in ruins, picturesque. The picturesque differs 
from the sublime in having nothing to do with dimension, or with 
awe. Price has a not unnatural difficulty in making his dis- 
tinctions clear, since he insists on finding the quality inherent 
in the object, rather than in the beholder’s eye. 

Price neglected Alison’s Essays on the Nature and Principles of 
Taste (1790), probably because his first work was already written 
before those appeared. Alison’s theory of associations better 
explains the picturesque: 


The effect . . . produced by associations, in increasing the emotions 
of sublimity or beauty, is produced also, either in nature, or in descrip- 
tion, by what are generally termed Picturesque Objects. — An old tower 
in the middle of a deep wood, a bridge flung across a chasm between 
rocks, a cottage on a precipice, are common examples. If I am not 
mistaken, the effect which such objects have on every one’s mind, is to 
suggest an additional train of conceptions. 


Price’s friend Knight seems to have taken note of Alison in his 
Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste (1805). He has 
an elaborate discussion of the word picturesque, and its Italian 
original pittoresco: 


This very relation to painting, expressed in the word picturesque, is 
that which affords the whole pleasure derived from association; which 
can, therefore, only be felt by persons, who have correspondent ideas to 
associate; that is, by persons in a certain degree conversant with that 
art. Such persons, being in the habit of viewing, and receiving pleasure 
from fine pictures, will naturally feel pleasure in viewing those objects 
in nature, which have called forth those powers of imitation. ... The 
objects recall to the mind the imitations, . . . and these again recall to 


THE CULT OF THE PICTURESQUE 199 


the mind the objects themselves, and show them through an improved 
medium — that of the feeling and discernment of a great artist. 


Knight distinguishes between the “ merely” picturesque, and 
the picturesque which is also beautiful: 


The mouldering ruins of ancient temples, theatres, and aqueducts, 

. as they appear in the landscapes of Claude, are, in the highest 
degree, picturesque; but the magnificent quays and palaces, adorned with 
porticos and balustrades, and intermixed with shipping, which enrich the 
seaports of the same master, are likewise picturesque; though in a 
less degree. 


There is a species of scenery “in which every object is wild, 
abrupt, and fantastic. ... This sort of scenery we call ro- 
mantic ; not merely because it is similar to that usually described 
in romances, but because it affords the same kind of pleasure, 
as we feel from the incidents usually related in such of them as 
are composed with sufficient skill to afford any pleasure at all.” 

Dr. John Aikin was annoyed by the affectations which Gilpin 
so easily provoked. In his Poems (1791), is a Picturesque Frag- 
ment, intended to be in the manner of Cowper, to which Aikin 
appends this explanation: 


The author is by no means insensible to the fund of genuine taste, as 
well as the uncommon powers of description, possessed by the admirable 
writer here alluded to; but he thinks he clearly discerns, that a habit 
of looking at nature merely with reference to its affording objects for 
the pencil, has, at times, given a fastidiousness to his feelings, and led 
him away from the perception of those beauties of a superior order which 
charm the simpler lover of the country. If this has at all been the 
effect upon the accomplished master of the picturesque school, what must 
be that upon many of his disciples, the vulgar herd of imitators. 


New follies spring; and now we must be taught 
To judge of prospects by an artist’s rules, 
And PICTURESQUE’S the word, 


begins his satire on The Prospect-Critic : 


And is it thus the handmaid Art presumes 
To rule her mistress? Thus would she confine 
The maker’s hand to suit the copyist’s skill? 


He would rather see a mountain, though of form disapproved by 
Gilpin, “than own whatever Claude or Poussin drew.” Aikin 


200 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


would confine the taste “ for what is properly called picturesque, 
or a reference of the natural scene to its imitations and improve- 
ments by the pencil,” to the artist; otherwise he would “ ap- 
prehend that more might be lost by opening an inlet to fastidious 
nicety, than would be gained by viewing things with a more 
learned eye.” 

One last fling 24 at the picturesque tourist was William Combe’s 
Tour of Dr. Syntax, in Search of the Picturesque (1812), which 
had the effrontery to set upon its title-page Ut pictura poesis, 
etc. Dr. Syntax is unmistakably derived from Gilpin, at least in 
the beginning. The schoolmaster has inspiration for a profitable 
vacation : 


Tl make a TOUR—and then I'll write it.... 
I'll ride and write, and sketch and paint, 

And thus create a real mint; 

I'll prose it here, I’ll verse it there, 

And picturesque it ev’rywhere. 


He follows (at a distance) Gilpin’s rules: 


I'll make this flat a shaggy ridge, 

And o’er the water throw a bridge: 
I'll do as other sketchers do — 

Put any thing into the view. . . 

Thus, though from truth I haply err, 
The scene preserves its character. ... 
He ne’er will as an artist shine, 

Who copies Nature line by line: 
Whoe’er from Nature takes a view, 
Must copy and improve it too. 


Though Knight and Price — he was then Sir Uvedale — lived 
respectively to 1824 and 1829, no new works of theirs on the 
picturesque were published after this poem. Not that the pic- 
turesque tourist died out ; but when admiration of the picturesque 
had become vulgarized, it ceased to gratify the exquisite. As 
Knight complained in 1794, 


. . . Keswick’s favour’d pool 
Is made the theme of ev’ry wandering fool. 


21 Of importance, that is. In The Album (1822) is a satirical essay On 
the Taste for the Picturesque, which describes it as highly artificial; and cites 
Salvator Rosa and the admiration felt for his banditti, as an example. 


VIII 


THE LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 
IN THE NOVEL OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 


As THE novels of an age are mirrors (often distorting) of its 
tastes and sentiments, so those of the eighteenth century reflect 
the development of taste for landscape, for the arts of landscape, 
and for the picturesque. These reflections in the novel some- 
times remain after the objects themselves have disappeared. 
Connoisseurship and landscape gardening were amusements of 
the genteel few as early as 1740,—of the genteelest few still 
earlier; but the novel is somewhat slow to take much account 
of these aristocratic matters. The cit’s belated apprehension of 
taste in pictures and in gardening was the butt of many a jest, as 
in The World. 

The faint Arcadian images of the romance-writers, though ridi- 
culed by dramatists, make little figure in the novels of the early 
eighteenth century. Steele has in Tke Tender Husband (1705) 
a sentimental heroine with head “full of Shepherds, Knights, 
Flowery Meads, Groves, and Streams”; and Fielding, in Love 
in Several Masques (1727), refers to the dangers of “ woods and 
purling streams . . . when a beauteous grove is your theatre, a 
murmuring cascade your music, and nature’s flowery landscape 
your scene.” But such things are infrequent in the novels. Mrs. 
Manley has but the vaguest and most conventional traces in 
The Agreeable Variety (1717), which speaks of the fine prospect 
from a hill-top showing “a View of the Inclosures of Kent, and 
the open lands of Surrey.” With Defoe a hill “ rises very steep 
and high,”! a country is “ very pleasant and fruitful,” or “ green 
and pleasant,” an African cataract shows “the water tumbling 
down the rock from one stage to another in a strange manner,’ ” 
and the Andes give “such a prospect of horror, that . . . it was 
frightful at first to look on the stupendous altitude of the rocks, 

1 Robinson Crusoe, Works, 1840, I, 62 (1719). 
2 Captain Singleton, Works, 1840, III, 27; 81: 89 (1720). 
201 


202 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


—every thing above looking one higher than another was amaz- 
ings’? 

The concern of the early novel is incident or intercourse; de- 
scription of nature figures just a little more than not at all. Mrs. 
Elizabeth Rowe, herself something of a painter, has a little in- 
terest in scenery. The few celestial scenes in her Letters from 
the Dead to the Living (1733) bear a vague resemblance to the 
pictures of Claude and Gaspar, in their “ delectable Vales and 
flow’ry Lawns, ... bright Cascades and chrystal Rivulets.” 4 
In Letters Moral and Entertaining she describes “a prospect of 
the most beautiful valley imaginable; it was full of woods, and 
waters, and water’d with a large river; in some places it run very 
streight, in others it was more contracted, and flow’d in a thou- 
sand windings; sometimes it was lost among the flow’ry lawns.” 
Her ideal ladies employ their time after prayers “ with musick 
or painting.” 

An epistolary novel by Mrs. Mary Collyer, Felicia to Charlotte 
(1744-1749), shows considerable sense of the picturesque, and 
is topographical as well. The author, fearful lest the descrip- 
tions should be thought “ romantic,” explains that the “ land- 
scapes are actually situated near Nottingham.” There is a pros- 
pect of “ spacious meadows and fields” extended to “an incon- 
ceivable distance, where our sight was only bounded by a clear 
sky that seemed to meet the ground, and in some places by hills, 
which could hardly be distinguished from the gilded clouds in 
which they wrapped themselves.” The plain is “ agreeably 
diversified ” by villages, rising among the trees, and a meander- 
ing river. But the specific turns to the usual literary vagueness. 
A park belonging to Lord M. is described, an “ intermixture of 
dusky groves and lightsome plains,” making a “landscape the 
most pleasingly rural.” ‘The vistos are plainly in the old manner ; 
and Felicia’s garden has hedges like walls, arches, alcoves, 
knots of flowers; though she and her husband change this, dis- 
missing the “ fantastical,” their ideas are certainly not advanced 
to the true “new manner.” ® 

3 Voyage Round the World, Works, 1840, VII, 257 (1725). 

4 Friendship and Death, 1733, pp. 7-8. 

5 This novel I have not been able to procure, but am indebted for the 


information about it to the article by Miss Helen Sard Hughes in the Journal 
of English and Germanic Philology, XV, No. 4. 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 203 


Leonora, or Characters Drawn from Real Life (1745), of 
anonymous authorship, testifies to the increasing interest in land- 
scape, and in gardening, though the garden is in the antiquated 
mode. ‘The scenery described is unreal, derived from pastoral 
poetry, apparently enhanced by Claude: 


This Place, sacred to Solitude, was situate on a rising Ground, which 
every Way entertain’d the Sight with a Variety of Silvan Scenes. 
There opening Lawns where happy Shepherds on their oaten Pipes play’d 
artless Lays of Love; whilst their tender Flock crop’d the verdant 
Herbage. Here purling Streams play’d in their wild Meanders through 
the flowery Landscape, and shone between the Hills, which bounded the 
View, that else would have been lost in the immense space of Air. ... 
The Sky flush’d with the last Gleams of departing Day. 


As a later novelist remarks, ‘‘ Poetry or Love gives an agreeable 
Enthusiasm to the Imagination, and presents all Objects in a 
different Light from that which they appear in to vulgar Eyes. 
To the latter, Trees are only Trees, and Water, Water; but 
to the former, they are Woods, and Groves, and purling 
Streams.” ® To Poetry and Love as modifiers of language was 
soon added Picturesque Enthusiasm. 

By this enthusiasm Richardson is but slightly affected. Mr. 
B.’s garden in Pamela (1740) seems vaguely old-fashioned, hav- 
ing a canal, a fountain, and walks; the “cascade” does not 
imply the new mode, since there were cascades of masonry in 
the older style. Clarissa Harlowe (1748) takes delight (in a 
brief footnote) in the view from her Ivy Summer-house, “a pretty 
variegated landscape of wood, water, and hilly country; which 
had pleased her so much that she had drawn it; and had the 
piece hanging up, in her parlour, among some of her other 
drawings.” Sir Charles Grandison (1753) has likewise his in- 
terest in nature expressed in a footnote, but a longer one, de- 
scribing his grounds, which are suitably adorned with cascade, 
winding stream, and ledge of rock-work “rudely disposed.” 
His park “is remarkable for its prospects, lawns, and rich-ap- 
pearing clumps of trees. . . . Alcoves, little temples, seats, are 
erected at different points of view; the orchard, lawns, and grass- 
walks, have sheep for gardeners; and the whole being bounded 
only by sunk fences, the eye is carried to views that have no 


6 The History of Miss Lucinda Courtney, n. d., I, 33. 


204. ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


bounds.” In this park the Lady Clementina pledges her friends 
to visit Italy; and in the spot where the pledge was given, 
is erected a little temple: “The orangery on the right hand; 
that distant clump of oaklings on the left; the villa, the rivulet, 
before us; the cascade in view; that obelisk behind us.” 

It seems at first strange that Tom Jones, Peregrine Pickle, 
and Matthew Bramble are more sensitive to scenery than 
Clarissa, Anna Howe, or Sir Charles Grandison. But Fielding 
and Smollett were more adaptable and more in the current of 
things than the prim little bookseller, in his grotto with the 
admiring ladies. Fielding, too, was a visitor at Hagley and at 
Prior Park. Tom Jones (who is in love, and therefore “ ro- 
mantick”’) has true relish for prospects. He longs for the view 
from the top of a hill, by moonlight; “for the solemn gloom 
which the moon casts on all objects is beyond expression 
beautiful, especially to an imagination which is desirous of 
cultivating melancholy ideas.” He is contrasted in this matter 
with the humble Partridge, afraid to be abroad by night, whose 
blood runs cold at his talk. When Thomas mounts Masard Hill 
at sunrise, “one of the most noble prospects in the world 
presented itself to their view, and which we would likewise 
present to the reader, but for two reasons: first, we despair of 
making those who have seen this prospect admire our description ; 
secondly, we very much doubt whether those who have not seen 
it, would understand it.” Fielding speaks with warmth of Esher, 
Stowe, Wilton, Eastbury, and Prior Park, where “days are 
too short for the ravished imagination while we admire the 
wondrous power of Art in improving Nature. In some of these 
Art chiefly engages our admiration; in others, Nature and Art 
contend for our applause; but, in the last, the former seems to 
triumph. Here Nature appears in her richest attire, and Art, 
dressed with the modestest simplicity, attends her benignant 
mistress.” The compliment to Allen which follows is a slighter 
echo of the elaborate one which makes Allen into Allworthy, 
and Prior Park into Allworthy’s grounds. The description of 
these is a combination of Gaspar— we are reminded of The 
Cascade which Mason engraved in 1744— and of Claude: 


. .. A plentiful spring, gushing out of a rock, covered with firs, and 
forming a regular cascade of about thirty feet . . . tumbling down in 


























































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































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LANDSCAPE By GASPAR PoussIN. 


Engraved by John Mason, 1744. 


In the Collection of William Kent. 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 205 


a natural fall over the broken and mossy stones till it came to the bot- 
tom of the hill, then running off in a pebbly lake. . . . Out of this lake, 
which filled the centre of a beautiful plain, embellished with groups of 
beeches and elms, and fed with sheep, issued a river, that for several 
miles was seen to meander through an amazing variety of meadows and 
woods, till it emptied itself into the sea, with a large arm of which... 
the prospect closed. 


The view on one side terminates in a ruined abbey, ivy-covered, 
and on the other in a ridge of wild mountains. With this 
picture we suspect that Hagley, seat of Fielding’s friend and 
patron, Lyttelton, had something to do. 

Peregrine Pickle (1751) goes for an evening walk with Miss 
Emy “through a variety of little copses and lawns, watered by 
a most romantic stream, that quite enchanted the imagination 
of Peregrine.” Aside from this, Smollett leaves picturesque 
scenery alone until he comes to Humphry Clinker (1771).7 
Matthew Bramble is a critic of landscape painting (the pic- 
tures of Mr. T. at Bath), of landscape gardening (the pleasure 
grounds in Scotland are not so well laid out “according to the 
genius loci as those in England, where the trees are thrown 
into irregular groupes, with intervening glades ”), and of pic- 
turesque views. He has seen the Italian lakes and Lake Geneva, 
but Loch Lomond surpasses them all. ‘ The prospect termi- 
nates in the high mountains. ... Every thing is romantic be- 
yond imagination. This country is justly styled the Arcadia 
of Scotland.” He finds “ an ideal of truth, in an agreeable land- 
scape taken from nature” which pleases him more “than the 
gayest fiction which the most luxuriant fancy can display.” 
Drumlaurig, the Duke of Queensberry’s seat, is “an instance of 
the sublime in magnificence.’ Miss Laetitia finds Vauxhall “a 
wonderful assemblage of the most picturesque and striking ob- 
jects, . . . groves, grottoes, lawns, temples, and _ cascades.” 
Edinburgh to Jerry Melford is “very romantic.” Pretentious 
and ill-judged attempts at landscape gardening are ridiculed in 


7 He has some satire to fling at the ignorant chatter about painting, in 
his Mr. Pallet, Peregrine Pickle, Chapters XLII, LXII, and LXIV, the 
virtuoso’s cabinet. Ferdinand Fathom becomes (Chap. XXXII) a con- 
noisseur, who is consulted by persons of fashion “in every thing relating 
to taste and pictures.’ 'The Travels (1766) have considerable to say about 
scenery, as previously noticed. 


206 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


the account of Mrs. Baynard’s enterprise. When Lismahago 
escapes from the supposed fire, Sir Thomas Bulford cries out, 
“O che roba!—O what a subject! —O! what caricatura! O 
for a Rosa, a Rembrandt, a Schalken! ” 

Sterne, though he wrote to Eliza of returning “from a de- 
licious walk of Romance,” of “a most Romantic Situation,” 
and of “as sweet a set of romantic apartments as you ever 
beheld,” did not let his pleasure in romantic views or objects 
stray into his fictions. He thought well of himself as a painter, 
judging by his letters, and attempted landscape, though the 
specimens available to us show but the vaguest generalization. 
One has a temple resembling that of Tivoli.2 Doubtless it is 
to his practice of the art that we owe his comic imitation of De 
Piles’ Scale in the dedication of Tristram Shandy, and the gibe 
at the connoisseur: “‘ The corregioscity of Corregio — the learning 
of Poussin, — the airs of Guido, — the taste of the Carrachi’s — 
or the grand contour of Amgelo.— Grant me patience, just 
heaven ! — of all the cants in this canting world, though the cant 
of hypocrites may be the worst, —the cant of criticism is the 
most tormenting! ” 

The Life of John Buncle, by Thomas Amory, was the most 
picturesque novel which had yet appeared, even by the time 
of its final volumes (1750-1766). It is notable for pleasure 
in wild scenery, especially for its early accounts of the Lake 
Country. The author is truly picturesque in his vision. ‘ The 
mountains, the rocky precipices, the woods and water, appeared 
in various striking situations, every mile I travelled on, and 
formed the most astonishing points of view.’ “A silent un- 
frequented glade, that was finely adorned with streams and 
trees. . . . The woods, the meadows, and the water . . . formed 
the most delightful scenes.” ‘I came as the sun was rising, 
to a valley.... It was green and flowery, had clumps of 
oaks in several spots, and from the hovering top of a precipice 
at the end of the glin, a river falls ingulphed in rifted rocks. 
It is a fine rural scene.” He is fond of sunrise and sunset pic- 
tures, and has also a liking for the Salvatorial: “A vast craggy 
precipice, that . . . by its gloomy and tremendous air, strikes 
the mind with a horror that has something pleasing in it”; 


8 Letters, ed. Cross, II, 210, 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 207 


“a wilder and more romantic country than I had ever before 
seen . . . an amazing mixture of the terrible and the beautiful.” 
On one occasion he shows the characteristic eighteenth century 
overlaying of the native scene with the scenery of Italy: “A 
vast valley, enclosed by mountains whose tops were above the 
clouds ...a country that is wilder than the campagna of 
Rome, or the uncultivated vales of the Alps and the Apennines. 
Warm with a classical enthusiasm I journeyed on, and in 
fancy’s eye beheld the rural divinities in those sacred woods and 
groves, which shaded the sides of many of the vast surrounding 
fells, and the shores and promontories of many lovely lakes and 
bright running streams.” 

The lady novelists, who soon began to appear in force, usually 
showed a taste for scenery. Mrs. Brooke’s Lady Julia Mande- 
ville (1763) provides a fine seat, with prospect including moun- 
tains, a foaming cascade, and meandering streams. “ The gar- 
dens and park ... are romantick beyond the wantonness of 
Imagination; and the whole adjoining country diversify’d with 
hills, valleys, woods, rivers, plains and every charm of lovely 
unadorned nature.” In The History of Emily Montague (1769) 
She uses the Canadian setting which she knew, “bold, pic- 
turesque, romantic.” ‘Sublimity is the characteristic of this 
western world; . . . a landscape-painter might here expand his 
imagination, and find ideas which he will seek in vain in our 
comparatively little world.” The prolific Mrs. Griffiths, Welsh 
by birth, illustrates what was a general habit (does not Jane 
Austen give way to it?) of making her heroine visit one or more 
of the British regions famed for picturesque touring. “I hon- 
our your Taste, for dropping Tears, at the Lake of Killarney,” 
writes the hero of her interminable epistolary novel, A Series of 
Letters between Henry and Frances (1757). Wales presents 
amazing transitions from sublime to beautiful. ‘I am _ per- 
suaded that all the inhabitants of Wales must be romantic: — 
there never was any place appeared so like enchanted ground,” 
writes an ecstatic heroine. Mrs. Griffiths has a tendency com- 
mon in the novels of the next thirty years: to describe grounds, 
sometimes actual places, and to ridicule the false taste of some 
improvers. “Such an improver as this would introduce the 
wildness of a wood into a parterre, plant a willow pendant over 


208 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


a fish-pond, and build a pavilion resembling a ruin. An archi- 
tect of this persuasion will erect an Italian palace in Scotland; 
nay, I have seen portico’s in Ireland built to the north.” 

In Henry Mackenzie’s Man of Feeling (1771) appears “an 
old broken soldier,” as Goldsmith would call him, against a 
sunset in a hollow vale: 


He was one of those figures which Salvator would have drawn; nor 
was the surrounding scenery unlike the wildness of that painter’s back- 
grounds. The banks on each side were covered with fantastic shrub- 
wood, and at a little distance, on the top of one of them, stood a finger- 
post, to mark the directions of two roads. ...A rock, with some 
dangling wild flowers, jutted out above where the soldier lay; on which 
grew the stump of a large tree, white with age, and a single twisted 
branch shaded his face as he slept. 

“Father! ”’ said Harley (who by this time found the romantic en- 
thusiasm rising within him). 


In the vein of The Deserted Village (which had appeared the 
year before) is a lament for the old schoolhouse demolished 
because it stood in the way of the squire’s prospects.® 

Village Memoirs (1774) by Goldsmith’s friend Cradock gave 
part of its slight substance to satire of the professional im- 
prover. Cradock, a gentleman gardener, did not admire Brown, 
whom he satirizes as the Mr. Lay-out, who destroys old scenes, 
and makes extravagant plans for changes. 

The friend of Shenstone, Richard Graves, had reason to be 
especially interesting in gardening. In that lively anti-Metho- 
dist novel, The Spiritual Quixote (1773), he ridicules the arti- 
ficial ruin, through the mouth of an indignant antiquarian who 
takes Lord Bathurst’s specimen for genuine, and being unde- 
ceived expostulates, on the ground that, like the use of Roman 
costume for pictures of living Britons, it misrepresents to pos- 
terity the habits and customs of the age. Graves’ novel is 
closely topographical; and he brings in both Hagley and the 
Leasowes, with Shenstone in person (dead ten years before) to 
point out the beauties of the cascades. 

Columella; or, the Distressed Anchorite (1779), which has 
landscape gardening as a leading theme, is manifestly the pic- 


9 In Julie de Roubigné are several descriptions of landscape, notably in 
Letter xxvi. 


C4 








FRONTISPIECE OF COLUMELLA, 1779. 


Drawn by C. W. Bampfield, amateur artist and gardener. 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 209 


ture of Shenstone. The grounds of Columella are laid out in 
imitation of Claude Lorrain, as the view from the grotto, or 
hermitage, shows: 


The fore ground of this landscape was broken by some tufts of oaks, 
and other forest trees, on the verge of the lawn; beyond which, on each 
side of the valley, several little hills, covered with hanging woods, rose 
in beautiful perspective, the tops or sides of which Columella had 
ornamented with several striking objects. 

On the brow of one hill appear’d the Sibyl’s temple, ruinated like 
that at Tivoli; a pediment, supported by Ionic columns, rose at the 
foot of another; the venerable gothic tower of a parish church was 
discovered at a distance among the tufted trees; and the whole was 
terminated by some blue mountains in the horizon, and enlivened by 
a considerable stream, which ran winding down the valley; over which 
an old bridge of three arches made a picturesque appearance; and as 
the sun was now setting behind the western hills, it gave a glowing 
warmth to the landscape, which would have foiled the pencil of B[amp]- 
f[iel]d, G[ains]b[oroug]h, or even of Claude Lorraine himself.1° 


The frontispiece of the first volume attempts to show this 
scene, in a caricature of Claude by Bampfield. Viewing with 
distaste a naked hill adjoining his grounds, Columella remarks 
to his visiting friends that it would be best adorned by a gibbet. 
“T think I have seen it introduced by Salvator Rosa, or some 
great painter,” says Hortensius, “ with good effect, to heighten ° 
the idea of a wild, unfrequented country; the usual scene of 
action of those lawless banditti.” But Columella is actuated in 
this instance not by picturesqueness, but by revenge; for the 
owner of the hill, having sold him his grounds, refuses to sell the 
hill which has a bad effect on his garden pictures. Columella’s 
difficulty is no doubt copied from Shenstone’s; and this too: 


His man Peter... told Columella that the farmer’s heifers were 
got into the young plantation at the bottom of Aaron’s well. 

“ Aaron’s well! you blockhead,” says Columella, “ Arno’s Vale, you 
mean.” 

“Nay, nay,” quoth Peter, “I know as how the right name of it is 
Tadpole Bottom.” 


The friends visit Stourhead, which introduces a disquisition on 
the over-crowding of many grounds with buildings of all ages 
10 Columella, ...A Colloquial Tale, 1779, I, 46-48. Bampfield was a 


gentleman who painted landscapes and also designed them on his grounds. 
Graves has several poems to him in Euphrosyne. 


210 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


and nations. “The taste of the time, tho’ more natural as well 
as elegant than ever prevailed in England before, yet for want 
of some fixed principles, a luxurious fancy is in danger . 

of relapsing again into Gothicism and absurdities. In the justly 
celebrated gardens of Stowe, we are led from an hermitage 
to a temple of Venus, and from St. Augustine’s cave to the 
temple of Bacchus, and thence to a Saxon temple, and so on. 
Quelle melange!” Graves ridicules also the artificial hermit, 
such as Charles Hamilton employed at Pains Hill. A candidate 
for the position presents himself to Columella, 


a very venerable figure, with a long white beard, a bald head, and dressed 
in a long brown coat almost to his ancles; he had two sticks nailed 
across in his hand, by way of a crucifix, and a string of issue-peas for a 
rosary of beads. ... 

Columella asked him whence he came? He said, he had lived four 
years in that capacity with the late Sir Humphry Whimwham. But 
that when Sir Humphry died, his son had insisted upon his doing a 
great deal more work than he had agreed for with Sir Humphry; 
which was only to keep his hermitage clean, and to sit at the door with 
a book in his hand when any company came, and such like. 


It turns out that he had been dismissed for misconduct with 
the dairy-maid, and for being caught too often with pipe and 
jug of ale instead of book and beads. Graves of course has a 
fling at the vulgar cit, who, in the person of Mr. Nonsuch, makes 
absurdly unpicturesque comments on Columella’s grounds, and 
exhibits in his own portion of an acre “ every individual article 
of modern taste,” including “a barn-end converted into a Gothic 
spire,” to make an effect from the garden. The ladies connected 
with trade show more picturesque feeling. ‘How did the 
ladies like your master’s place?” one of the friends asks of 
Columella’s housekeeper. ‘‘O! perdigiously,’ says Mrs. Betty; 
“they said it was so rural, and so gothic! Miss was quite in 
exotics, and repeated plays, and poetry,—the lady said she 
could sit in that grotto and sympathize by the hour.” 

Fanny Burney shows no interest in prospects or gardens; 
“ Green trees and fat cows! what do they tell one? ” she seems 
to say, with Mr. Meadows, in Cecilia. Other women novelists 
of the period, however, enter into description with zest. One is 
the Scottish Susanna Harvey Keir, whose History of Miss Gre- 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 211 


ville (1787) is rural and romantic in high degree. The heroine 
takes a picturesque walk, and coming to “a height commanding 
one of the grandest prospects ” she had ever beheld, pulls from 
her pocket a volume of Thomson (she is by no means the only 
heroine of this era thus equipped) and finds therein “a lively 
description of the surrounding scenery.’’ She goes with one of her 
lovers to view a cascade in a setting “ remarkably wild and pic- 
turesque, and finely suited to the sublime ideas which, in such a 
place, one is naturally led to indulge.’ They behold a genteel 
young woman who stood “leaning against one of the rocks, 
and, with a pencil and small book in her hand, appeared to be 
taking some sketches of the surrounding landscape, which indeed 
was suited to the genius of a Salvator.” 

Charlotte Smith was a pupil of the highly-regarded George 
Smith of Chichester. To support herself and her children, the 
unfortunate lady turned out novels at the rate of about one a 
year. Though she never went any nearer to the south of France 
than Normandy (where she and her husband lived for a time 
to escape importunate creditors) she had recourse to its scenes 
for her first novel, Emmeline, the Orphan of the Castle 
(1788), which preceded Mrs. Radcliffe’s adventures in the ad- 
jacent regions by more than a year. Emmeline is a great admirer 
of scenery; impressed by that between Marseilles and Toulon, 
she thinks of her lover; ‘she knew nobody but Godolphin who 
had taste and enthusiasm enough to enjoy it.” Congenial en- 
joyment of scenery is frequently a bond, in the novels. 
Ethelinde, or The Recluse of the Lake (1789) opens at Gras- 
mere; the heroine goes forth at sunset to sit beside the lake, 
bearing with her “that volume of the works of Gray” in which 
he describes it. Celestina (1791) dwells in a castle in the 
Pyrenees, in “a sublimely beautiful landscape.” The Old 
Manor House (1793), her best, abounds in scenery; moonlight 
scenes, “a sunset with ruins,” as the title of a Claudian picture 
might read. The hero, Orlando, sighs for the presence of 
Monimia, the heroine: “‘ But never am I allowed to point out to 
her these lovely prospects, never permitted to cultivate that 
pure and elegant taste she has received from nature.” Such a 
scene as this, from The Wanderings of Warwick (1794), shows 
a Claudian pattern: 


212 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


The hills suddenly sinking into a long tract of meadow, made a pas- 
sage for the river, which there made its way to the sea, distinctly 
visible at about seven miles distance, where the passing sail was fre- 
quently seen glittering in the sun, and then disappearing behind the 
opposite hills. 


She has wearied of so much castle-building, as she says in The 
Banished Man (1794),'1 and is perhaps a little resentful of the 
successes Of Mrs. Radcliffe, to whom she had manifestly shown 
the way. In The Letters of a Solitary Wanderer (1799) she 
expresses a novelist’s view of art: “It is undoubtedly true, that 
the rudest and wildest sketch of Salvator is more precious than 
the most laboured piece of the correctest Flemish master.” 
Resentment at Mrs. Radcliffe is perhaps responsible for a bit of 
satire: 


You must not be displeased at having perpetual description, little nar- 
ration, and still less character. My hills will boldly swell, my woods 
wave over as many nightingales as I can collect, my castles frown, 
and my streams fall, or murmur, or glitter, as luxuriously and as fre- 
quently, as if I were the wandering and persecuted heroine of a modern 
novel in the very newest taste. You may be assured, that should I 
meet with either ghost or banditti, I will not fail to engage them to 


“Deepen the horror of the falling floods, 
And breathe a browner horror on the woods.” 


In Rural Walks (1800), “ Dialogues intended for the use of 
young persons,” she urges the value of a sense of the pictur- 
esque, though she considers “the affectation of being in rapture 
at prospects” often “tiresome cant.” But to view objects with 
a painter’s eye enhances their charms; and drawing will be a 
resource for amusement, and perhaps against adversity. 
Charlotte Smith’s more successful rival, Mrs. Radcliffe, “ the 
Shakespeare of romance,” carried landscape decoration of the 


11 The Banished Man, second ed., 1795, II, iii-iv. “I find that Mowbray 
Castle, Grasmere Abbey, the castle of Roche Mort, the castle of Hauteville, 
and Raglan Hall, have taken so many of my materials to construct, that I 
have hardly a watch-tower, a Gothic arch, a cedar parlour, or a long gallery, 
an illuminated window, or a ruined chapel left to help myself.... My 
ingenious cotemporaries have so fully possessed themselves of every bastion 
and buttress, of every tower and turret, of every gallery and gateway, 
together with all their furniture of ivy mantles, and mossy battlements; 
tapestry and old pictures; owls, bats, and ravens, that I had some doubts 
whether .. . it would not have been better to have earthed my hero.” 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 213 


novel much further. “To the wild landscape of Salvator Rosa,” 
so a critic of her own time said, she “ added the softer graces of 
a Claude.” ** For a generation admiringly familiar with these 
artists, her pictures constituted no slight part of the popularity 
of her fictions; though an occasional complaint at her excesses 
of description is heard. She enlarges description as she pro- 
ceeds. Her first slight tale, The Castles of Athlin and Dun- 
bayne (1789), “a Highland story,” makes little use of the scenic 
opportunities of its setting; in A Sicilian Romance (1790) 
there are more pictures; The Romance of the Forest (1791), has 
still more; while in her two best novels, The Mysteries of 
Udolpho (1794) and The Italian (1797), this last written after 
her visit to the Rhine, and to the Lakes, in 1793, the landscapes 
are elaborate and numerous to a degree which wearies the 
modern reader, who fails to find in them the delights of recog- 
nition which readers of the earlier day discovered.‘* Her 
pictures are manifestly taken from the painters’ landscapes, not 
from nature. She had not indeed travelled farther south than 
part way down the Rhine; but what was the need? The pictures 
of Claude and Salvator gave her precisely what she required. 
Her literary enjoyment of a Claude is shown in some remarks 
which she makes on a picture of Lord Eardley’s: 


An evening view, perhaps over the Campagna of Rome. The sight 
of this picture imparted much of the luxurious repose and satisfaction, 
which we derive from contemplating the finest scenes of Nature. Here 
was the poet, as well as the painter, touching the imagination, and mak- 
ing you see more than the picture contained. You saw the real light 
of the sun, you breathed the air of the country, you felt all the cir- 
cumstances of a luxurious climate and the most serene and beautiful 
landscape; and, the mind thus softened, you almost fancied you heard 
Italian music on the air, —the music of Paisiello.1* 


Two words often recur in her descriptions. One is romantic, 
suggesting that subjective treatment of nature, so frequent with 


12 Nathan Drake, Literary Hours, third ed. I, 261. 

13 Gaston de Blondeville, which she left unpublished, lacks the abundant 
descriptions, besides being otherwise inferior. 

14 Memoir, in Gaston de Blondeville, 1826, I, 65. “She knew how to 
paint Italian Scenery which she could: only have seen in the pictures of 
Claude or Poussin,” says Scott; and he remarks that some of her descriptions 
“approach more nearly to the style of Salvator Rosa.” Scott’s Life of Mrs. 
Ann Radcliffe. 


214 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


her, and certainly encouraged by the artists she admired; for if 
ever two temperaments, vastly different, to be sure, were mir- 
rored in the painted scene, so were mirrored the temperaments 
of Claude and Salvator. In her first novel, Ossian seems chiefly 
the inspiration of her scenery. “ He loved to wander among the 
romantic scenes of the Highlands, where the wild variety of 
nature inspired him with all the enthusiasm of his favourite 
art [i.e., poetry],” she says of her hero. “ He delighted in the 
terrible and in the grand, more than in the softer landscape.” 
Later heroes and heroines are still more impressionable. In 
The Italian the heroine looks out on the mountains purple in 
the sunset light, and “ the silence and repose of the vast scene, 
promoted the tender melancholy that prevailed in her heart.” 
Again, borne away in captivity, she reflects among peaks and 
precipices, “If I am condemned to misery, surely I could endure 
it with more fortitude in scenes like these, than amidst the 
tamer landscapes of nature! Here, the objects seem to impart 
something of their own force, their own sublimity, to the soul.” 
The hero finds the scenery about him in harmony with him- 
self: “‘ Disappointment had subdued the wilder energy of the 
passions, and produced a solemn and lofty state of feeling; he 
viewed with pleasing sadness the dark rocks and precipices, 
the gloomy mountains and vast solitudes, that spread around 
him.” 

Another word which is frequent, and expressive of her elabo- 
rate, artificial, yet beautifully ordered and effective composi- 
tions, is picturesque. She describes a picture, not a natural 
scene; though she will sometimes throw in a conventional phrase, 
such as “magic scenes . . . no pencil could do justice to,” or 
“more terrific than the pencil could describe.” She borrows 
many of the hints for her designs from the painters, such as 
the dark foreground, the strong chiaroscuro, as in these from The 
Italian: 


To the south a small opening led the eye to a glimpse of the land- 
scape below, which, seen beyond the dark jaws of the cliff, appeared 
free, and light, and gaily coloured, melting away into blue and distant 
mountains. 


One of the supporting cliffs, with part of the bridge, was in deep 
shade, but the other, feathered with foliage, and the rising surges at its 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 215 


foot, were strongly illumined; and many a thicket wet with spray, 
sparkled in contrast to the dark rock it overhung. Beyond the arch, 
the longdrawn prospect faded into misty light. 


From Claude she borrows sunset scenes, far horizons, like 
these just cited, edged with dim mountains, or with the sea, 
castles and ruins crowning the cliffs and wooded hills, pastoral 
scenes, seaports, with buildings and ships, and light dancing on 
the tips of the waves,—‘“ sunshine landscapes and blue dis- 
tances ”’: 


A natural vista would yield a view of the country, terminated by 
hills which retiring in distance, faded into the blue horizon. 


She viewed the flowery luxuriance of the turf, and the tender green 
of the trees, or caught, betwixt the opening banks, a glimpse of the 
varied landscape, thick with wood, and fading into blue and distant 
mountains. 


These from The Italian; and from the Sicilian Romance: 


There appeared on a point of rock, impending over the valley, the 
reliques of a palace, whose beauty time had impaired only to heighten 
its sublimity. An arch of singular magnificence remained almost entire, 
beyond which appeared wild cliffs, retiring in grand perspective. The 
sun, which was now setting, threw a trembling lustre upon the ruins 
and gave a finishing effect to the scene. 


The lawn, which was on each side bounded by hanging woods, de- 
scended in gentle declivity to a fine lake. ... Beyond appeared the 
distant country, rising on the left with bold romantic mountains, and 
on the right, exhibiting a soft and glowing landscape, whose tranquil 
beauty formed a striking contrast to the wild sublimity of the opposite 
craggy heights. The blue and distant ocean terminated the view. 


For all these, the appropriate illustrations could be selected 
from the Liber Veritatis, without difficulty. So too of the sea- 
ports, as in The Italian, though the extreme magnificence of the 
Claudian architecture is lacking; but even the groups of figures 
are traceable to the pictures. 

The ruined villa on some bold point, peeping through the trees... 


the dancing figures on the strand, ... the sea trembling with a long 
line of radiance. 


The sea fluctuating beneath the setting sun, the long mole and its 
light-house tipped with the last rays, fishermen reposing in the shade, 
little boats skimming over the smooth waters. 


216 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


The strong effulgence, which a setting sun threw over the sea. . . the 
Roman tower that terminated the mole below, touched as it was with 
the slanting rays; and the various figures of fishermen, who lay smok- 
ing beneath its walls, in the long shadow, or who stood in sunshine 
on the beach. 


The long mole and the lighthouse are like some of Salvator’s 
seaports, too. But from him she derives chiefly a taste for 
banditti, caves, cliffs and torrents, oaks and gigantic chéstnuts, 
precipices and chasms. She loves to paint a party of banditti or 
gypsies seated around a fire, with fine chiaroscuro. Once she 
erects a gibbet in a wild landscape of barren crags and precipices ; 
an object which, as Graves testifies in Columella, was esteemed 
peculiarly Salvatorial.° Her vast granite precipices are 
“shagged with larch, and frequently darkened by lines of gigan- 
tic pine bending along the rocky ledges.” The nightmare quality 
of her scenery shows well in this from The Sicilian Romance: 


A group of wild and grotesque rocks rose in a semi-circular form, 
and their fantastic shapes exhibited Nature in her most sublime and 
striking attitudes. Here her vast magnificence elevated the mind of the 
beholder to enthusiasm. Fancy caught the thrilling sensation, and at 
her touch the towering steeps became shaded with unreal glooms; the 
caves more darkly frowned—the projecting cliffs assumed a more 
terrific aspect, and the wild overhanging shrubs waved to the gale in 
deeper murmurs. ... The iast dying gleams of day tinted the rocks 
and shone upon the waters. 


How strong was the impress of Salvator on her mind is shown 
by her venturing close to a conscious anachronism in Udolpho, 
to introduce his name: 


The scene of barrenness was here and there interrupted by the 
spreading branches of the larch and cedar, which threw their gloom 
over the cliff, or athwart the torrent that rolled in the vale. ... This 
was such a scene as Salvator would have chosen, had he then existed, 
for his canvass. St. Aubert, impressed by the romantic character of 
the place, almost expected to see banditti start from behind some pro- 
jecting rock. 


In other words, though Salvator will not be painting his land- 
scapes for sixty years to come (the novel is laid in the year 
15 Udolpho, I, 143-144. Chap. v. I have never seen a picture of Salvator’s 


with this adornment; but the association is so frequent that there must have 
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LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 217 


1584) St. Aubert feels in advance the association Salvator is 
to create between wild mountainous scenes and banditti. 

Mrs. Radcliffe’s most characteristic scenes are composed of 
a union of the savage and the soft, Salvator and Claude: “ tre- 
mendous precipices . . . contrasted by the soft green of the 
pastures and wood.” After a vivid account of a mountain 
torrent, thundering through the chasm which is its bed, and the 
gloom and vastness of the rocks which overhang it, she loves 
to come 


. . . to extensive prospects over plains and toward distant moun- 
tains, . . . the sunshine landscape, which had so long appeared to 
bound this shadowy pass. The transition was as the passage through 
the vale of death to the bliss of eternity.1® 


The evening sun, shooting athwart a clear expanse of water, lighted 
up all the towns and villages, and towered castles, and spiry convents, 
that enriched the rising shores; . . . and coloured with beamy purple 
the mountains, which on every side formed the majestic background 
of the landscape... . 

How sweetly the banks and undulating plains repose at the feet 
of the mountains; what an image of beauty and elegance they oppose 
to the awful grandeur that overlooks and guards them. 


Woods and pastures, and mingled towns and hamlets, stretched 


toward the sea . . . while over the whole scene was diffused the purple 
glow of evening. This landscape, with the surrounding Alps, did 
indeed present a perfect picture of the lovely and the sublime, ... of 


“beauty sleeping on the lap of horror.” 17 


Mrs. Radcliffe is less given to gardening than many of the 
novelists of her time; but it is noteworthy that when she wants 
a garden in The Italian she transfers one in the English manner 
to Italy: 


The style of the gardens, where lawns, and groves, and woods, varied 
the undulating surface, was that of England, and of the present day, 
rather than of Italy; except ‘“‘ where a long alley peeping on the main ” 
exhibited such gigantic loftiness of shade, and grandeur of perspective, 
as characterize the Italian taste. 


No other novelist is so closely a follower of painted scenery. 
Indeed, the names of the painters somewhat rarely appear. In 


16 Jtalian, Bk. I, Chap. VI. 
17 Udolpho, Bk. I, Chap. v. The phrase is presumably borrowed from 
Helen Maria Williams, whose Julia will be noticed later. 


218 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


the pretended Love-Letters of Hackman and his victim, Martha 
Reay, by Croft (1777), “If Salvator Rosa, or Poussin, wanted to 
draw a particular character, J am their man,” says Hackman; 
and later imagines a painting of Augustus, Antony, and Lepidus 
meeting on a desolate island; “Salvator Rosa would not make 
me quarrel with him for doing the background.” ** 

Julia (1790), by Helen Maria Williams, that person of in- 
tense sensibilities and friend of the Revolution, has a phrase 
which Mrs. Radcliffe borrowed, without improving. After a 
lyric description of the broken crags and rocky promontories 
of a lake, and the sound of a, neighbouring cataract, she adds: 
“The contrast between this cultivated valley, and its savage 
boundaries, was so striking, that it seemed like Beauty reposing 
in the arms of Horror.” She has a splendid sunset scene over the 
lake, and a moonrise following. Another lady of more romance 
than discretion, Mrs. Robinson — Perdita — goes to Italy for the 
setting of Vancenza (1792),— “ towering precipices from whose 
giddy height the fearful shepherd gazes with terror and aston- 
ishment.” ‘A picture so exquisitely sublime” has marked 
effect on the hero; “Dal Vero, fascinated with delight, forgot 
for a moment even the graces of Elvira. ‘ All beauteous Na- 
ture!’ exclaimed he, ‘how extensive, how luxuriant are her en- 
chantments!’”’ 

In The Monk (1796), Lewis confines his landscape to the 
catastrophic close: 


The disorder of his imagination was increased by the influence of the 
surrounding scenery; ... the gloomy caverns and steep rocks, rising 
above each other, and dividing the passing clouds; solitary clusters of 
trees scattered here and there, among whose thick twined branches the 
wind of night sighed hoarsely and mournfully; . . . the stunning roar 
of torrents, as swelled by late rains they rushed violently down tre- 
mendous precipices; and the dark waters of a silent sluggish stream, 
which faintly reflected the moonbeams, and bathed the rock’s base on 
which Ambrose stood. 


Bits of landscape are frequent decorations of the Minerva Press, 
and those other ephemeral volumes which appeared in great num- 
18 Dr. John Moore in Zeluco, 1786, (Chaps. xxiv, xliv), has something 


to say of the impositions practiced by unscrupulous dealers in pictures, but 
makes no adequate use of the scenery his Italian setting afforded. 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 219 


bers, feeble followers of the school of Terror or Wonder. One of 
the most conscious example is in The Wanderer of the Alps 
(1796), which opens its volumes with a pair of companion pieces 
like those numerous Evenings and Mornings of the painters. In 
Volume I “ The sun had just sunk beneath the craggy summit of 
a gloomy rock, that shot its brown spires above the waving tops 
of the tall pines,” and in II “The sun had just risen above the 
eastern hills, and cast his dazzling lustre over the immense 
forest . . . hanging from the projecting sides of the precipices, 
or crowding the deep sunk vallies with the vegetable progeny.” 

Landscape gardening is a frequent topic; useful to show true 
taste, or false, or fashionable folly, or parvenu ineptitude. John- 
stone, in Chrysal (1760), tells of the church built by Dashwood 
at Medmenham for “ the double purpose of convincing the popu- 
lace of his regard to religion, and of making a beautiful termina- 
tion to a vista which he had cut through a wood in his park.” 
The ladies of Milennium Hall (1762), written by Sarah Scott, 
sister of Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu, design their own grounds. 
“On an eminence, ‘bosomed high in tufted trees,’ is a temple 
dedicated to solitude. The structure is an exquisite piece of 
architecture, the prospect from it noble and extensive.” Moore, 
in Edward (1796), depicts a mulatto nabob whose grounds 
change with the taste of his successive mistresses. 

Ridiculous aspects of the gardening fashion are satirized by 
the dramatists also. Arthur Murphy’s Three Weeks after Mar- 
riage (1764) borrows outright from Pope’s essay in The Guard- 
ian, to describe the clipped trees of his Drugget. Garrick and 
Colman show Sterling, in The Clandestine Marriage (1766), 
advanced to the point of serpentining; (“ Ay, here’s none of your 
straight lines here— but all taste — zig-zag — crinkum-crankum 
—in and out—right and left—so and again— twisting and 
turning like a worm’”’) ; a cascade, an artificial spire, and ruins 
which cost a hundred and fifty pounds to repair. Garrick was 
himself an ornamentor of grounds. Sheridan makes Puff, in 
The Critic, speak as a literary Brown: “ to insinuate obsequious 
rivulets into visionary groves,” etc. 

The novelists’ ornamented grounds of fine taste, though fre- 
quent, are rather vaguely described. They are sure to have a 
meandering stream; and either nature inevitably seems the work 


220 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


of art or art the work of nature.’® Capability Brown and the im- 
provers in general are referred to in tones both humourous and 
admiring. ‘‘ Lady Frances sent for Mr. Brown, who found great 
Capabilities in the situation; ” 2° ‘Nothing ever pleased me so 
thoroughly as the figure, physiognomy, and behaviour, of the per- 
son who came down (in his own carriage) to me in the capacity of 
schemer. . .. He no sooner examined the ground than he pro- 
tested it was capable of every thing.’** A full description of 
the Brownesque landscape is given in Melissa and Marcia 
(1788) : 


From the eminence on which the house was placed, as far as the eye 
could reach, it traced a silver meandering stream.— In the distribution 
of the grounds, the hand of Brown had assisted, but not forced nature; 
. . . A velvet lawn gently sloped from the house down to the river, and 
served for pasture to some hundreds of sheep.... A rising wood 
stretched itself to a considerable distance on the East.— On the West, 
the eye wandered over an immense Park; the ground was beautifully 
irregular; wild, and diversified with scattered herds of deer and cattle; 
groups of trees with here and there a spire or a steeple peeping over 
their heads, and the view was terminated by rising hills. 


“Mr. Outline, a most capital improver”’ comes down to arrange 
the grounds of a lady of fashion, in A Tale of the Times, by 
Jane West (1789); he creates cascades, replaces walls by ha-has,. 
and erects ruins in abundance. Another seat is described, belong- 
ing to persons of taste. “I have set up temples and alcoves out 
of number,” says the lady; “some are for solitary musings, 
others for social parties. There is one . . . formed upon a plan 

. [taken] from a beautiful ruin on Campania.” In Holcroft’s 
Anna St. Ives (1792) improvement of grounds is an important 
interest, furnishing nearly all the humor, in the vanity of Sir 
Arthur and the illiteracy of his steward and superintent, Abi- 
melech Henly, apparently a first cousin of Smollett’s Winifred 
Jenkins. ‘There is the temple beside a the new plantation, 

19 Among the many examples are: Barford Abbey, by Mrs. Gunning, 
second ed., 1771, I, 15-16; Agnes de Courci, by Mrs. Bennet, Bath, 1784, I, 
110-111; The Progress of Love or The History of Stephen Elliott, 1780. 
I, 10-12; The Younger Brother, by Mr. Dibdin, 1793, I, 8; Adeline de 
Courcy, 1797, II, 25; Munster Abbey, by Sir Samuel Egerton Leigh, Edin- 
burgh, 1797, I, 25-26. 

20 Munster Village. 

21 Shenstone-Green, 1779, I, 59. 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 221 


of a witch your onnur has so long bin a talkin of a buildin of,” 
he writes to Sir Arthur; “and then there is the extension 
and ogmenshun of the new ruins.” Sir Arthur enjoys showing 
his grounds: ‘ Nobody can suspect so many temples, and groves, 
and terraces, and ascents, and descents, and clumps, and shrub- 
beries, and vistas and glades, and dells and canals, and statues, 
and rocks, and ruins are in existence, till they are in the very 
midst of them.” Maria Edgeworth, in Castle Rackrent (1798), 
makes one of that reckless line a spendthrift on improvements ; 
and in The Absentee (1812) shows the folly of the vulgar Mrs. 
Rafferty, whose “ happy moving termination,” an artificial fisher- 
man on a Chinese bridge, tumbles over as the visitors approach, 
to the lady’s dismay. 

The heroines of novels are often employed with the pencil, 
depicting “the soft features of the landscape.’”’ One suspects 
that they insert castles, or ruins, and group peasants, “or any 
thing that will make it unlike the original,” as the fashionable 
lady in Jane West’s Infidel Father (1792) recommends. Jane 
Austen’s Emma, we remember, painted unsuccessful portraits and 
presumably landscapes; the sensible Eleanor Dashwood in Sense 
and Sensibility was skilled in the art, and her devoted sister 
found the lukewarmness toward it of Edward Ferrars almost 
damning. 

Jane Austen’s world is much interested in grounds. John 
Dashwood improved his; and Cleveland, the Palmers’ place, 
offers to Marianne Dashwood a Grecian temple on an eminence, 
from which she may survey the prospect toward the horizon hills. 
In Emma we hear from Mrs. Elton of Maple Grove, —an in- 
stance of the vulgarian imitation of the gentry; and Knightley’s 
Abbey is situated charmingly beside the usual curving river with 
wooded banks of some abruptness. Lady Catherine de Bourgh 
has grounds, but not to compare with her nephew’s, which, 
Elizabeth Bennet intimates very reasonably, caused her to soften 
her prejudices toward their owner. ‘“ She had never seen a 
place for which nature had done more, or where natural beauty 
had been so little counteracted by an awkward taste. ... The 
hill crowned with wood, from which they had descended, was 
a beautiful object. Every disposition of the ground was good, 
and she looked at the whole scene, the river, the trees scattered 


222 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tH CENTURY ENGLAND 


on its banks, and the windings of the valley as far as she could 
trace it, with delight.” Mr. Rushworth, in Mansfield Park, is 
a foolish victim of the rage for improvement. He will engage 
Mr. Repton at five guineas a day. ‘“Smith’s place is the ad- 
miration of all the country; and it was a mere nothing before 
Repton took it in hand. I think I shall have Repton.” Edward 
Bertram “would rather have an inferior degree of beauty,” 
of his own choice, than the beauties of the professional improver. 
Henry Crawford, a man of taste, is ready to give amateur advice; 
which Rushworth is equally ready to accept. The scene, in- 
tended though it is to reveal individual traits, is also one of 
Jane Austen’s few general satires on a contemporary folly. Yet 
the general fashion is worked into the individual character most 
cleverly. “That iron gate, that ha-ha, give me a feeling of re- 
straint and hardship,” says Miss Bertram; “I cannot get out, 
as the starling said.” 

As to the picturesque, though Jane Austen laughs at the ex- 
cesses of its devotees we feel that she was one herself in some 
degree, so sympathetic is she, and so abundant are her refer- 
ences. Of her most delightful heroines only Catherine Morland 
is without a native taste for views; and she acquires one with 
suspicious ease and readiness. She goes walking with the Tilneys, 
and hears them talking a language strange to her ears. 


They were viewing the country with the eyes of persons accustomed to 
drawing; and deciding on its capability of being formed into pictures, 
with all the eagerness of real taste... . It seemed as if a good view 
were no longer to be taken from the top of a high hill, and that a clear 
blue sky was no longer a proof of a fine day. ... A lecture on the 
picturesque immediately followed, in which his instructions were so clear 
that she soon began to see beauty in every thing admired by him; and 
her attention was so earnest that he became perfectly satisfied of her 
having a great deal of natural taste. He talked of foregrounds, dis- 
tances, and second distances; side-screens and perspectives; lights and 
shades; —and Catherine was so hopeful a scholar, that when they 
gained the top of Beechen Cliff, she voluntarily rejected the whole city 
of Bath, as unworthy to make part of a landscape. 


Marianne Dashwood is an ardent follower of Gilpin. Edward 
enrages her with his insensibility. 


“T have no knowledge of the picturesque,’ [he admits shamelessly] 
“T shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 223 


uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects 
out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium 
of a hazy atmosphere. ... It exactly suits my idea of a fine country, 
because it unites beauty with utility — and I daresay it is a picturesque 
one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of 
rocks and promontories, grey moss and brushwood, but these are all 
lost on me. I know nothing of the picturesque.” 


Eleanor attempts to calm her sister’s agitation at this heresy 
by suggesting that Edward is affecting indifference because of 
the affectations of admiration on the part of the crowd. “It 
is very true,” Marianne replies, “that admiration of landscape 
scenery has become a mere jargon. Everybody pretends to feel 
and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who 
first defined what picturesque beauty really was.” To which 
Edward adds, 


“T like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like 
crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are 
tall, straight and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. 
I am not fond of nettles, or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more 
pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower, and a troop of tidy, 
happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti in the world.” 

Marianne looked with amazement at Edward, with compassion at her 
sister. 


Elizabeth Bennet knows the principles of Mr. Gilpin. ‘“ You 
are charmingly grouped,” she answers Darcy’s attempt to include 
her in the walking party in the garden; “ the picturesque would 
be spoiled by a fourth.” She is moved to raptures at the 
thought of a visit to the Lakes: “ What are men to rocks and 
mountains?” She and the Gardiners, people of taste (though 
citizens), visit Derbyshire with enthusiasm, and Pemberley with 
felicity. Sweet Anne Elliott repeats poetry as she looks at the 
autumn landscape, and the encomiums of Captain Wentworth on 
Lyme send the whole party thither on a scenic visit. But the de- 
scription of “a scene so wonderful and lovely . . . as may more 
than equal any of the resembling scenes of the far-famed Isle of 
Wight ” is in the words of Jane Austen herself. 

Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen represent so decidedly the 
eighteenth-century standpoint towards nature that though with 
them we move out of the eighteenth and into the nineteenth 
century, their testimony may fairly be claimed. There is even 


224 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18tTH CENTURY ENGLAND 


need to pursue the subjects of the picturesque and of gardening 
a little further. The improver especially continues to haunt the 
novel for several years. The views of the novelists are coloured 
by Price and Knight; they ridicule Repton. ‘“ The artist with 
his curling-tongs and comb, had dressed out the landscape with 
as much wild irregularity as the ‘disposition of the place’ 
was perceptible of,” says Men and Women (1807). Lucille, in 
Hannah More’s Coelebs (1809), is “ the little Repton of the 
valley.” A chapter of Flim-Flams! (1805) by Isaac D’Israeli, 
is given to a distortion of the controversy between Repton, and 
Price and Knight; Mr. Contour, the hero, tries to make his 
grounds look like a picture. 


“The Improver,” closing with great composure his Red-Book, ob- 
served that Gaspar Poussin could do any thing in three yards of can- 
vass — we work with different materials. The earth is no canvass, the 
spade is no pencil, the foliage are no tints that mingle to the hues we 
wish, — except in the verses of the Garden Poets. 


Peacock was another satirist of the improver, taking Price’s side 
against Repton. He treated the subject in his farce, The 
Dilettanti, written about 1809,?? and carried over from it some 
of the characters. Marmaduke Milestone is Repton, Sir Patrick 
O’Prism is Price; in Headlong Hall (1816), Peacock’s first novel, 
Milestone arrives at Headlong Hall, portfolio under arm, and 
observes “that there were great capabilities in the scenery, but 
it wanted shaving and polishing.” He has an argument with 
Sir Patrick, in which phrases from their works fly about. The 
romantic Miss Tenorina admires a cascade in its natural state. 
“ Beautiful, Miss Tenorina! ” exclaims the improver. ‘“ Hideous. 
Base, common, and popular. Such a thing you may see any- 
where in wild mountainous regions.” . 

The picturesque is frequent. William Godwin has much of it. 
Fleetwood: or The New Man of Feeling (1805) derives a good 
deal of his excess of feeling from Wales. “I sat for hours on 
the edge of a precipice, and considered in quiet the grand and 
savage objects of nature,” he says. Oxfordshire makes a paltry 
showing beside North Wales. ‘Wales was nature in the vigour 
and animation of youth; she sported in a thousand wild and ad- 


22 Carl Van Doren, Life, 1911, p. 75. 


LANDSCAPE ARTS AND THE PICTURESQUE 225 


mirable freaks; she displayed a master-hand; every stroke of 
her majestic pencil was clear, and bold, and free.” We meet 
a young woman in this novel “ who applied herself to the art of 
design; she drew, and even painted in oil; and her landscapes 
in particular had an excellence which to speak moderately of 
them, reminded the:beholder of the style of Claude Lorraine.” 
“There is a lady in the Romance of the Highlands,” (I quote 
from The Heroine, a satirical novel of 1813) “who . .. when 
dying, and . . . about to disclose the circumstances of a horrid 
murder, . . . unfortunately expended her last breath in a beauti- 
ful description of the verdant hills, rising sun, all nature smil- 
ing, and a few streaks of purple in the east.” In Melincourt 
(1817) Peacock makes frequent reference to the picturesque, 
to the “everlasting talkers about taste and beauty, who 
see in the starving beggar only the picturesqueness of his rags, 
and in the ruined cottage only the harmonizing tints of moss, 
mildew and stonecrop.” A picturesque tourist is discovered 
sketching “a scene of magnificent beauty,” including lake, preci- 
pices, and woods. That engaging hero, the silent Sir Oran Utan, 
“after looking at the picture, then at the landscape, then at the 
picture, then at the landscape again, at length expressed his de- 
light in a very loud and very singular shout.” The later Crotchet 
Castle (1831) is especially notable for scenery; as is of course 
The Adventures of Elphin (1829). 

In Waverley (1814) is a true Salvatorial scene with the ap- 
propriate tree: 


The path, which was extremely steep and rugged, winded up a chasm 
between two tremendous rocks, following the passage which a foaming 
stream, that brawled far below, appeared to have worn for itself in 
the course of ages. A few slanting beams of the sun, which was now 
setting, reached the water in its darksome bed, and showed it partially, 
chafed by a hundred rocks, and broken by a hundred falls. The de- 
scent from the path to the stream was a mere precipice, with here and 
there a projecting fragment of granite, or a scathed tree, which had 
warped its twisted roots into the fissures of the rock. 


When Waverley meets Donald Bean Lean, he finds him not as 
expected : 


The profession which he followed — the wilderness in which he dwelt, 
—the wild warrior forms that surrounded him, were all calculated to 


226 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


inspire terror. From such accompaniments, Waverley prepared himself 
to meet a stern, gigantic, ferocious figure, such as Salvator would have 
chosen to be the central figure of a group of banditti. 


References to Claude and Salvator continue to appear for some 
time. Mrs. Burdett blames Claude for the idealization of Italy 
by the English. “ To the almost cloudless skies of Claude we 
join in perspective the harmonious green of English verdure.” ?? 
G. P. R. James has a robber band in Richelieu (1829) meeting 
by torchlight which “glared upon features which Salvator might 
have loved to trace.” Lady Charlotte Bury describes the scen- 
ery near Volterra as bearing “all the characteristick features 
of Salvator Rosa’s wildest pencil. That painter is said to have 
studied in this neighbourhood three years.” ?* A lady speaks of 
the Alps, in Godwin’s Deloraine (1833): “In her description 
it was as if the pencil of Claude or of Gaspar Poussin had 
passed over the landscape, and brought forth at one point and 
another hidden beauties, which but for their inspiration would 
never have been revealed.” 

More thorough search would doubtless produce many more 
such references, but these are sufficient to show how the in- 
fluence of the Italian landscape school was extended well into 
the nineteenth century. For landscape description in the Eng- 
lish novel up to about 1825, these painters are largely responsible. 
From that time, the description became more realistic, and the 
pictures of Claude, Salvator, and Gaspar were soon an antiquated 
mode, discarded and, after Ruskin’s attacks, discredited. 


23 English Fashionables Abroad, 1828, I, 103. 
24 Journal of the Heart, New Brit. Nov., x, 24. 


TX 
ITALIAN LANDSCAPE AND ROMANTICISM 


TuHroucuHout the preceding chapters I have carefully avoided 
that nebulous word romantic, except in frequent quotations; 
and that equally nebulous term, romanticism, I have not used 
till now. But now it is desirable to emphasize that no defini- 
tion of that term can fairly exclude the feelings with which the 
English in the eighteenth century regarded the landscapes of 
Claude Lorrain, Gaspar Poussin, Salvator Rosa, Jan Both, Her- 
mann Swanevelt, Richard Wilson, and all the rest who painted 
remote and extravagant Italian scenes,—surely a world of 
dreams and romance. And if the attempts to reproduce on 
English ground these visions of the distant and ideal Italy may 
not be accounted romantic, I do not know what more fairly 
may. Nor was this devotion to the imaginary landscapes of 
Italy a growth of the late century only, or dependent in any 
way on Jean Jacques Rousseau for its origin. It appears as 
early as the Spectator advertisements, in 1711; indeed, Dryden’s 
Ode on the Death of Mistress Anne Killigrew implies that in 
1686 it had already begun. To be sure, it was shared in the 
early half of the century only by the comparative few who were 
privileged by fortune to have glimpses of the pictures at home 
or abroad; but the few included leaders of taste, such as Shaftes- 
bury, Lady Betty Germaine,’ Dr. Mead, Thomas Coke, Horace 
Walpole. Never, as I have spent time in telling, was under- 
standing of art, or pretence of understanding it, so essential for 
the well-bred English person as from 1740 on through the 
opening of the nineteenth century; and the new art of land- 
scape painting occupied a position of increasing importance. 

It is hard for us today to realize the importance of the print 
in determining the mode in which the eighteenth century re- 
garded nature. The large scrapbooks which polite society ex- 
amined in leisure hours, the framed prints which adorned the 

1 Graves, Art Sales, 1918. See under Claude; also under Salvator Rosa. 

227 


228 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


rooms of intimate association (how often in the account of 
great houses we are told of the dressing-rooms hung with land- 
scape prints), the little prints which ladies and gentlemen took 
as models for their amateur paintings, were of a world removed 
noticeably from the world of reality. Indeed, this detachment 
from reality, we apprehend, made much of the charm of the 
pictures for the eighteenth century. We have to remember that 
at no other time or place were excellent engravers of landscape 
so abundant as in England through the last sixty years of the 
eighteenth century and the opening of the nineteenth. More 
often than not, the references to Claude and the others are based 
not on the paintings but on the work of Vivares, Woollett, 
Goupy, Mason, and their fellows. Those large and impressive, 
beautifully wrought plates are what John Scott, for example, is 
thinking of in his Essay on Painting; so he says, in the foot- 
notes to a passage which itself shows well the romance which 
the pictures represented: 


When CLAuDeE’s bright morn on Mola’s precinct dawns, 
What sweet quiescence marks the groves and lawns! 

How calm his herds amongst the ruins graze! 

How calm his curious peasant stands to gaze! 

When bold Satvator under turbid skies 

Bids his scath’d hills and blasted trees arise, 

Behind wild rocks bids his wild stream be lost, 

And from vast cliffs shews broken fragments tost.... 


Unless we realize to some degree the place held in the eighteenth 
century by the “fair visionary world” of the print, we cannot 
understand the poetry or the thought of the century. The prints 
gave entrance to a world almost as fanciful as that of the 
Arcadia, or of Otranto; and the pleasure which the folk of the 
eighteenth century took in them was similar to that which the 
folk of any age will take in a playhouse which gives refuge from 
the always unsatisfactory reality. 

The romantic generation of the closing eighteenth and the 
opening nineteenth century found much stimulus in the Italian 
landscape painters. The world of letters clung still to the dis- 
tant and visionary at a time when Constable and Crome were 
taking the path of a beautiful realism. Even Wordsworth, who, 
like Cowper, is exceptional in this regard, refers to Salvator as 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE AND ROMANTICISM 229 


a standard for wild landscape; and according to The Prelude, 
found pleasure in the panorama of 


... the Falls 
Of Tivoli; and high upon that steep, 
The Sibyl’s mouldering Temple. 


There are suggestions of Claude in Coleridge’s Reflections on 
Having Left a Place of Retirement (1796), and in Religious 
Musings (1794). Scott manifestly admired both Claude and 
Salvator. He picked from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, reviewing 
Part IV in the Quarterly, the stanzas on Clitumnus, as present- 
ing “the outlines of a picture as pure and brilliant as those 
of Claude Lorraine.” It is indeed one of the rare instances in 
Byron of such close copying, or so it seems, of pictures. For 
pictures we are assured by his friends, Byron had little taste; 
but here he seems to be arranging a really Claudian design of 
river, nymph, and milk-white steer, in foreground, and in the 
background 


... a temple still, 
Of small and elegant proportions, keeps 
Upon a small declivity of hill 
Its memory of thee. . 


Hazlitt in his view of both artists is typical of many: 


I used to walk out at this time [1809] ... of an evening, to look 
at the Claude Lorrain skies. ... I was at that time an enthusiastic 
admirer of Claude, and could dwell for ever on one or two of the finest 
prints from him hung around my little room: the fleecy flocks, the 
bending trees, the winding streams, the groves, the nodding temples, 
the air-wove hills, and distant sunny vales. 


As for Salvator Rosa, Hazlitt regards him as “the most ro- 
mantic of landscape painters.” ‘Salvator Rosa—never was 
man so blest in a name! ” cries Hartley Coleridge. 


I once did see a landscape of Salvator’s which taught me what an 
imaginative thing a landscape may be.... Such shaggy rocks, — 
such dark and ruinous caves, —such spectre-eyed, serpent-headed trees, 
wreathed and contorted into hideous mimicry of human shape, as if 
by the struggles of human spirits incarcerated in their trunks, — such 
horrid depths of shade,—such fearful visitations of strange light, — 
such horrid likenesses 


230 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


Of all the misshaped half-human thoughts 
That solitary nature feeds 


were surely never congregated in any local spot. 


> 


“The magnificent imagination of Salvator Rosa,” is the phrase 
of Sir Egerton Brydges; who compares him with Byron.? Pea- 
cock, in The Philosophy of Melancholy (1812), unites the con- 
trasted painters to the romantic gloom that is his theme: 


In Claude’s soft touch thy tenderest image reigns. 
His evening vallies, and his weed-twined fanes. 
Salvator’s hand thy darkest grandeur caught... 
Piled the black rock, and grasped the Alpine storm. 


In the letter to Reynolds (1818) we have witness to the day- 
dreaming uses to which Keats turned the glimpses of Claude 
gained from the British Institution: 


You know the Enchanted Castle, it doth stand 
Upon a rock, on the border of a Lake, 
Nested in trees. ... 


See what is coming from the distance dim! 
A golden galley all in silken trim... . 


. .. From the Postern gate 
An echo of sweet music doth create 
A fear in the poor Herdsman, who doth bring 
His beasts to trouble the enchanted spring. ... 


O that our dreamings all, of sleep or wake, 
Would all their colours from the sunset take... .? 


How the persons of Claude and Salvator were taken as ex- 
emplars of the worship of nature, we find in some of the minor 
poets of the same period. So in a poem, The Painter, the Rev- 
erend George Croly depicts Claude as the lone gazer on sun- 
rises and sunsets.* William Sotheby, going to Italy in 1816, 
makes much of the painters in his Italy: 


2 Recollections, 1825, I, 30, 75. 

3 Keats was a picturesque tourist: “I put down Mountains, Rivers, Lakes, 
dells, glens, Rocks and Clouds, with beautiful, enchanting, Gothic, picturesque.” 
Letters, ed. Forman, p. 157. ‘I have been werry romantic indeed among 
these Mountains and Lakes.” P. 198. “ My Scotch journey gave me a dose 
of the Picturesque with which I ought to be contented for some time.” P. 
277. 
* Catiline ... With Other Poems, 1812, pp. 212-213. 


ITALIAN LANDSCAPE AND ROMANTICISM 231 


From the surrounding scene a Poussin drew 

His rich and mellow hue: 

And Claude there taught his pencil how to trace 
The soft aerial grace 

That sooth’d the westering sun, whose orb of light 
Like molten gold, on the proud temple shone. .. . 


That rocky crest, where oft Lorraine was found... 

And from the shapings of his fancy gave 

To tow’r, or palace, or hoar monument... 

Some height’ning touch, some new embellishment, 

Such as th’ enchanted spirit might adore, 

And lovelier make the scene that loveliest seem’d before. . . . 


. . . Where was Salvator found, 
When all the air a bursting sea became, 
Deluging Earth? —On Terni’s cliff he stood, 
The tempest sweeping round. 


Alaric Watts, chief creator of the Annual, is another admirer of 


Claude’s bright rippling wave and sunset sky, 
Salvator’s storm-rent rock and mountain brow, 
And Poussin’s classic glooms, 


and also of George Barret, two of whose very Italian landscapes 
adorn the sumptuous Lyrics of the Heart (1851), and to whom 
Watts addresses a memorial poem: 


. .. Thou shouldst have lived 
Where sunny Claude his inspiration drew, 
Or learned Poussin neath th’ umbrageous oaks 
Of some old forest... . 


In the Annuals Italian landscape lingers on for years. There 
were even Landscape Annuals, from 1830 to 1839, for which 
Prout and Harding designed charming pictures,—a last faint 
efflorescence of the romantic delights of distant Italian scenes, 
and faint shadow of Claude and his companions, doomed, with 
Ruskin’s heavy sarcasms in Modern Painters, to pass into dis- 
repute and eclipse. 

So in the Age of Victoria the conventions of landscape which 
had prevailed in England since the Age of Anne were at last 
discarded. Entering England with the support of history paint- 
ing, to which their subjects often made them akin, the Italian 


232 ITALIAN LANDSCAPE IN 18TH CENTURY ENGLAND 


landscapes had been more and more admired, by travellers who 
delighted to recognize scenes they had visited, and by readers 
who found the appeal of Italy and classic ruins and names irre- 
sistible. Established by the leaders of fashion as the correct 
patterns, these landscapes had been taken as models by poet, 
painter, and even gardener, and had laid the rules of picturesque 
beauty for the observer of nature. Multiplied by the engravers 
and the imitators, they were present in almost every English 
home of means or culture. If at the last of the century — 
beginning with Cowper —there came poets and painters who 
cast aside the Claude-glass and found beauty in hedge-rows and 
corn-fields, and in Hampstead and Mousehold Heaths, it was 
because of a long training in seeing landscape pictorially,—a 
training which of necessity began with the most elaborate and 
heightened forms of landscape, with the richest and most ob- 
vious appeal, and on the most vast and impressive scale. Polite 
eyes were shocked by Salvator Rosa into recognition of the 
“beauty and fierceness ” of wild and mountainous scenery.® An 
age which valued conscious form found satisfaction in the superb 
and unreal forms of Claude’s landscape; but that same landscape 
was the inspiration of Constable and Keats. 


5 Letter of Edward Rolle, from the Alps, 1753. Spence’s Anecdotes, p. 444. 


INDEX 


A 


Addison, Joseph: painting, 10, 11, 16; 
gardening, 124-126; picturesque, 10, 
II, 124, 169 

Aikin, John, 163, 199 

Akenside, Mark, 111, 112 

Albano, 22, 65, 90, 132, 142, 144 

Algarotti, Count, 36 n. 

Alison, Archibald, iii, 162, 198 

Allen, Ralph, 137, 204 

Alps. See Mountains 

Amateur artist: in society, 8, 12, 87, 
89, 90, QI, 92, 171; in world 
of letters, 90, 91, 92, 93, 96, 206; 
represented in fiction, 211, 221, 222, 
225; instruction, 14, 86-89, 94; 
etchers, 90; designers of gardens, 
127, 128, 134-136, 140, 143, 145, 
153, 155, 156, 159, 208-210, 219, 
222 

Amory, Thomas, 110, 206, 207 

Amphitheatre, 11, 101, 105, 124, 127, 
146, 175, 180, 181, 194 

Ancients, landscape of the, iii, 10, 21 

André, Major, 177 

Anglo-Chinese garden, 121. See Cham- 
bers, Sir William; Landscape gar- 
dening 

Annuals, 231 

Apennines. See Mountains 

Arblay, Mme. d’, 210 

Art. See Engraving, Print, Painting; 
Landscape gardening 

Art, instructive, 23, 90 

Art, interest in, iii, v, 7-10, 12, 14- 
34, 35-56, et passim 

Artificial hermit, 155, 210 

Artificial ruins. See Ruins, artificial 

Auctions. See Picture sales 

Austen, Jane, 87, 91, 221-223 

Avenues, 122, 123, 140, 154, 163 


B 


Babbitt, Irving, Rousseau and Roman- 
ticism, iv 


Bacon, Lord, 152 

Baker, Henry, Universal Spectator, 
27 

Baldinucci, 36, 44 

Bampfield, C. W.., 93, 94, 209 

Barbauld, Anna Laetitia, 114 

Barnard, Edward, 166 

Barret, George (elder), 42, 73, 75 

Barret, George (younger), 75 

Barriére, Dominique, 79 

Barrington, Daines, 153 

Barry, James, 23, 30, 42, 71 

Bartsch, Adam von, Anleitung, 80 

Beattie, James, 112, 113 

Beauclerk, Lady Diana, 90 

Beaumont, Sir George, 16, 36, 42, 70, 
89, 98 n. 

Beauty and sublimity. See Sublime 
and beautiful 

Beckford, William, 67, 91 

Beckham, George, 132 n. 

Belgium, English garden in, 165 

Bell’s Fugitive Poetry, 132 n., 133 Nn. 

Bellamy, Daniel, 116 

Berghem, 69, 70, 71, 72, 78, 187, 196 

Berkeley, Bishop, 12, 92 

Berkeley, George Monck, 50 n. 

Beyle, Henri, 167 

Bishop, Samuel, 94 

Blake, William, 119 

Blenheim, 132, 140, 141, 146, 165 

Bloem, Hans von, 69 

Blunt, Reginald, Mrs. Montagu, 141 n. 

Borgognone, Il, 10, 24, 69 

Boswell, James, 31; picturesque, 156, 
190, IQI 

Both, Jan, 35, 69, 70, 74, 78, 79, 83 

Boul, Philip, 8 

Bourdon, Sebastian, 68 

Bowles, William Lisle, 115 

Bramston, J., 27 n., 129 

Bray, William, 195 

Breval, John, 64 

Bridgeman, Charles, 109, 125, 126 

Bril, Paul, v, 10, 57, 63, 65, 69, 79, 83 

British Magazine, 176 


233 


234 


British travelers in Italy. See Italy 

Bromley, W., 10, 58 

Brooke, Henry, 109, 110 

Brooke, Mrs., 207 

Brown, Dr. John, 113; Letter on the 
Lakes, 116, 168, 175, 192, 193, 194 

Brown, John (engraver), 82, 83 

Brown, Lancelot (“ Capability ”’), 
140-155, 163, 165, 219, 220; praise 
of, 118, 140, 141, 142, 146, 147, 150, 
152; opposition to, 131, I4I, 145, 
148, 149, 153, 154, 155, 156-162, 
181; compared to painter, 140, 142, 
146; to author, 141 

Brydges, Sir Egerton, 230 

Buckridge, J., 49 

Budworth, Joseph (Palmer), 194 

Burdett, Mrs., 226 

Burke, Edmund, 54, 111, 176, 186, 
198. See Sublime and beautiful 

Burlington, Earl of, 28, 129 

Burney, Fanny, 210 

Burns, Robert, 119, 197 

Bury, Lady Charlotte, 226 

Byrne, William, 83 

Byron, Lord, 229, 230 


Cc 


Cambridge, Richard Owen, 140, 141, 
143 

Campagna, the, 10, 11, 36, 118, 158, 
207, 214, 220 

Canot, Pierre Charles, 83 

Caracci, the, v, 17, 21, 24, 30, 86, 206 

Carter, Mrs., 85, 87, 172, 173, 174 

Cascades, referred to, 10, 92, 113, 114, 
136, 154, 165, 169, 170, 173, 174, 
178, 180, I96, 201, 202, 203, 204, 
207, 208, 233,.210, 220). 224 

Cecil, Mrs. Evelyn, History of Gar- 
dening, 126 Nn. 

Chabanon, Michel-Paul-Gui de, 164 

Chambers, Sir William, 137, 145, 148- 
150, 165 

Champion, Anthony, 190 

Chapone, Mrs., 173 n., 174 

Charles I, 61 

Charles II, 7, 61, 122, 184 

Chartreuse, Grande, 110, 111, 170, 178 

Chatelain, Jean Baptiste, 78, 79, 80, 
88, 89, 182 


INDEX 


Chatsworth, 5, 8 

Chesterfield, Lord, 
129 n. 

Chinese style of gardening, 121, 143, 
145, 148-150, 154, 183, 221 

Clark, James, 194 

Claude. See LorraIn, CLAUDE 

Claude-glass, 182, 186, 194, 232 

Cliefden, 108, 122, 134 

Clipped trees, 6, 122, 125, 219 

Cocker, William, 194 

Coleridge, Hartley, 229 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 120, 197, 
220 

Collections, British, 61-68. 
ture collecting 

Collins, William, 112 

Collyer, Mrs., 202 

Coloni, Henry Adrian, 8 

Colvin, Sir Sydney, Keats, 67, 86 

Combe, William, 200 

Common Sense, 133 

Connoisseurs in England, 18, 24-34, 
62, 69. See ODilettante, Taste, 
Virtuoso 

Connoisseur, The (poem), 27; (peri- 
odical), 27, 28 

Constable, John, 16, 42, 68, 70, 72, 
119, 232; on Ci L., 42, 43> On cane 
52 

Cooke, Henry, 8 

Cooke, Thomas, 26 

Correggio, 16, 22, 30, 66, 86, 206 

Cotton, Charles, 5 

Coventry, Francis, 143 

Cowper, William, 57, 92, 95 n., II9, 
154, 163, 199, 232 

Crabbe, William, 119, 120 

Craddock, Thomas, 92, 154, 208 

Creation of Italian Landscape in Eng- 
land, The, 121-166 

Critical Review, 37, 39, 82, IOI N., 
121, 160 

Croft, Sir Herbert, 218 

Croly, George, 230 

Crome, John, 89, 118, 228 

Croome, 141, 146 

Cult of the Picturesque, The, 167-200 

Cumberland, George, 117 

Cumberland, Richard, 116, 117, 193 

Cunningham, John, 110 

Curten, M., 121 n. 


28, 54, 55, 67, 


See Pic- 


INDEX 


D 


Dalton, Dr., 110, 139 n., 175 

Dankers, Henry, 7 

Dark pictures, admiration for, 16, 20, 
30, 51 

Darwin, Erasmus, 114 

Defoe, Daniel, 61, 201 

Delany, Mrs., 66, 85, 87, 90, 128 n., 
I7I, 172, 184 

Delille, Abbé, 164, 165 

Denham, Sir John, 3, 4, 110 

Dennis, John, 5, 6 

De Piles, 40, 206 

Derbyshire, 5, 6, 8, 177); 178, 183, 195, 
223 

Dermody, Thomas, 50 n. 

Dialogue on Stowe, A, 136, 137 

Dictionaries, on picturesque, 168 

Dilettante, 26 

Dilke, Lady, Claude Lorrain, 63, 75 n., 
81 

D’Israeli, Isaac, 224 

Dodsley, Robert: gardening, 135, 139; 
Miscellany, 132 m., 175; Museum, 
28 

Drawing books, 88 

Drawings, collections of, 65, 66 

Dryden, John, 4, 8, 15, 16, 227 

Du Bos, Abbé, 19, 77 

Duck, Stephen, 134, 145 

Du Fresnoy, De Arte Graphica, 15, 16, 
19, 20, OI 

Dughet, Gaspar. See Poussin, Gaspar 

Dutch Gardening, 122, 124 

Dutch painting, English estimate of, 
V, 15, 35, 41, 43; 58, 61, 65, 84, 212, 
influence of, iv, 7, 8, 41. See Ideal- 
izing in art 

Dyer, John, 3, 4, 96, 98-101, 102, 108, 
TX, FI3 


E 


Earlom, Richard, 81 

Edema, Gerard, 7 

Edgeworth, Maria, 221 

Eiduphusikon, Loutherbourg’s, 72 

Elsheimer, v, 63, 69 

English Connoisseur, The, 63, 64, 69 

“English garden,” the, 121. See 
Landscape gardening 


235 


English Poetry of the 18th Century, 
Italian Landscape in, 95-120 

Engravers of landscape. See Land- 
scape engravers 

Engraving, British School of Land- 
scape, 79-83 

Engraving, Thomson on, 106 

Esher, 132, 164, 204 

Essay on Harmony as it relates chiefly 
to Situation and Buildings, An, 134 

Essay on the Different Natural Situ- 
ations of Gardens, An, 153 

European Magazine, 45 

Evelyn, John, 57, 61, 77, 122 


F 


Faithorne, William, 14, 77 

Farington, Joseph, Diary, 42, 89, 93, 
146 0; 

Female Spectator, 64, 90 

Fenton, Elijah, Misc. Poems, frontis- 
piece, 83 

Ferg, Francois Paul, 69, 78 

Ferme ornée, 134, 163 

Fielding, Henry, 18, 201, 204, 205 

Fiennes, Celia, 6, 122 

Fittler, James, 83 

Foote, Samuel, 28, 64 

Forged pictures, 32, 33, 67 

Formal gardens, 114, 121-127 

Fox, Charles James, 66, 155, 178 n. 

Frederick, Prince of Wales, 62, 102, 
133 

Freeman, Sir William, 38 

Free Thinker, The, 21 n. 

French imitation of English gardening, 
I2I, 135, 146, 163-165 

Friedlaender, Walter, Claude Lorrain, 
56 n. 

Fugitive Miscellany, 62 

Fuseli, Henry, 52 


G 
Gainsborough, Thomas, 24, 33, 41, 89, 
94, 95 n., 196 
Galleries, picture. See Picture gal- 
leries 


Gardening. See Landscape gardening 
Gardens, formal, 114, 121-127 
Gardiner, James, 123 


236 


Garrick, David, 72, 219 

Gelée, Claude. See Lorrain CLAUDE 

Gay, John, illustrative plates, 83 

General Magazine, 38, 47 Nn. 

Genlis, Mme. de, 165 

Gentleman gardener. See Amateur 
artist, Allen, Cambridge, Hamilton, 
Lyttelton, Morris, Pitt, Price, Shen- 
stone, Southcote 

Gentleman’s Magazine, 21 n., 26 n., 
146 

George III, 27, 62, 88, 145 

Germaine, Lady Betty, 227 

Germany, English garden in, 165, 166 

Gessner, Solomon, 70, 71 

Gilbert, Josiah, Landscape Art, iv 

Gilpin, William, iv, 24, 87, 183-189, 
192, 195, 196, 199, 200, 222-223; 
list of works, 185; Essay on Prints, 
27, 52, 78, 84, 168, 183; on the 
picturesque, 96, 168, 183-189, 195, 
199, 222, 223; on gardening, 155, 
160, 188; on C. L., 37, 39, 40, 545 
on S. R., 48, 51, 52, 54, 187 

Girardin, Count de, 121, 163, 164 

Godwin, William, 224, 226 

Goethe, Conversations, 36 and n. 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 95 n., 118, 154, 208 

Gothic, 114, 136, 144, 165, 172, 198, 
209, 210, 212 n., 230 n. See Ruins 

Goupy, Joseph, 71, 73, 82, 87, 88, 108 


Graf, Arturo, L’Anglomania ... in 
Italia, 166 
Graham, R., 15, 38, 49 


Grande Chartreuse, 110, 170, 178 

Grand Tour, 7, 30, 104, 108 

Graves, Richard, 70, 83, 94, 116, 135, 
136, 138, 139, 208-210 

Gray, Thomas, 168; gardening, 132, 
144; the picturesque, iv, I10, I11, 
170, 181-183, 193, 194; C. L., 38; 
S. R., 49, 53 

Greever, Garland, Two Versions of 
Grongar Hill, 98 n. 

Greville, Lady Louisa, 82 

Griffier, John, 8, 72, 78; (the son), 8 

Griffiths, Mrs., 207 

Grimm, Melchior, 163 

Grose, Francis, 30 

Grottos, 123, 128 and n., 144, 153, 178 

Grounds. See Blenheim, Croome, 
Esher, Hagley, Holkham, Kew, 


INDEX 


Leasowes, Nuneham, Pain’s Hill, 
Persfield, Prior Park, Rousham, 
Stourhead, Stowe, Studley, Ug- 
brooke Park, Wilton, Wooburn 
Farm 


H 


Hagley, 104, 134, 135, 136, 137, 147 

Ha-ha, the, 109, 126, 130, 220, 222; 
(sunk fence), 203 

Hamilton, Charles, 140, 145, 155, 159, 
161, 179, 210 

Harte, Walter, 20, 190 

Hassell, J., 196 

Hawkins, Sir John, 85, 

Hayley, William, 45, 46, 93, 119 

Hazlitt, William: C. L., 41, 43, 44, 86, 
229; S. R., 45, 49, 54 

Heath, James, 82 

Heeley, Joseph, 136 n. 

Hermit, artificial, 155, 210 

Heroine, The, 225 

Herring, Thomas, 170 

Hertford, Lady, 31, 57, 59, 87, 102, 
171 

Highlands, the, 175, 183, 185, 190, 213, 
214 

Hill, Aaron, 128 n. 

Hill, Robert, 20 n. . 

Hind, A. S., Short History of En- 
graving, 87 n. 

History of Miss Lucinda Courtney, 
203 

History painting, 17, 23, 24, 41 

Hobbema, 158 

Hogarth, William, 22, 23, 28, 73, 83 

Holcroft, Thomas, 221, 222 

Holkham, 62, 89, 122, 129, 131, 137 

Hollar, Wenceslas, 14 

Hoppner, John, 42 

“ Horrid,” 3, 5, 123, 145, 217, 218, 
229; “ horror,” 3, 5, 7, 12, 18, 48, 
49, 53, 54, 55, 60, 71, II10, 117, 174, 
183, I91, 201, 206; horrid beauty, 
169, 217, 218 

Houghton collection, 65 

Hughes, Helen S., 202 n. 

Hughes, John, 96 

Hunt, Leigh, 86 

Hutchinson, William, 96, 192, 193 

Huysum, James van, 72 

Hymn to the Dryads, 43, 54 n. 


INDEX 


I 


Idealizing in art, 16, 41. 
painting 

Illustrations, book, 83 

Imitations of English garden on Con- 
tinent, 121, 146, 163-166 

Improvements, 62. See Landscape 
gardening 

Italian gardens, 9, 123, 125, 217 

Italian Landscape and Romanticism, 
227-232 

Italian Landscape in England, The 
Creation of, 121-166 

Italian Landscape in English Poetry 
of the Eighteenth Century, 95-120 

“Ttalian Light on English Walls,” 
57-94 

Italian scenery, English admiration of, 
ili, 9, 10-12, 30, 207; et passim 

Italy, British artists in, 30, 31, 59, 
60, 102 

Italy, British travelers in, 5, 6, 9-13, 
29, 30, 31, 57, 58, 59-61, 104, 105, 
169, 178 

Italy, English garden in, 166 


See Dutch 


J 


Jackson, John Baptist, 83 

Jackson, William, 94 

Jacobs, Hildebrand, 20 

Jago, Richard, 138 

James, G. P. R., 226 

Jardin anglais, 161 

Johnson, Samuel, 85, 86, 133, 135, 153, 
168; the picturesque, 190, I9I 

Johnston, Charles, 29, 219 

Journal of English and Germanic 
Philology, 98 n., 202 n. 


K 


Kames, Lord, 131, 137, 162 

Keate, George, 22, 93 

Keats, John, 67, 86, 230, 232 

Keir, Susanna, 210, 211 

Kent, William, 80; artist, 83, 129 n.; 
gardening, 127, 128, 129-133, 134, 
I4I, 143, 147, 152, 153, 160, 161, 
163, 164; dead trees, 131, 160 

Keppel, Frederick, Golden Age of En- 
graving, 80 


237 


Ker, W. P., Art of Poetry, 186 n. 

Kew, 137, 148, 149, 165 

Kirkall, E., 83, 123 

Klosterman, John, 32, 47 

Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 16, 82 

Knight, Richard Payne, 55, 56, 66, 
B25 Co LSA0 PAT As isatio Rs 
51; picturesque school, 156-158; 
theory of the picturesque, 198, 199 


L 


Ladies Miscellany, 29 

Lakes, the, 6, 75, 110, 116, 117, 163, 
175, 181, 182, 187, 192, 193, 194, 
195, 206, 211, 213, 223 

Lambert, George, 73, 78, 108, 109 

Landscape Arts and the Picturesque in 
the Novel of the 18th Century, The, 
201-226 

“Landscape,” compared with “ pros- 
pect,” 95, 96, 180 

Landscape, English interest in, at the 
Opening of the 18th Century, 
3-13 

Landscape engraving, 77-83 

Landscape engraving, British school 
of, 79-83 

Landscape gardening: influence of 
Italian scenery on, iii; of pictures, 
lil, 34, 127, 130, 131, 132, 136, 137, 
138, 139, 142, 146, 147, ISI, 152, 
153, 155, 156, 159, 160, 161, 164, 
224; a British art, 121, 148, 154; 
expression of romanticism, iv, 227; 
moralizing in, 137, 138, 149, I50, 
162, 166, 222; requisite of taste, 28, 
133; topic in fiction, 202, 203, 204, 
205, 207, 205,210, 217, -219-222, 
224 

Landscape, Italian, and Romanticism, 
227-232 

Landscape, moralized, 99, 100, 109, 
£72, 1 70y-287,. 407 

Landscape painting, v, 7-10, 14, 15, 
17, 58, 59; estimate of, 14, I9, 23, 
34, 38, 58, 59, 176; compared to 
pastoral poetry, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23; 
used for interior decorating, 23, 72, 
73, 75, 76; influence on gardening, 
see Landscape gardening 


238 


Landscape painters, v, 7, 8, 35-56, 
68-76, 86-95 

Landscape, The (1748), 109 

Langley, Batty, 127, 144 

Lassels, Richard, 9, 57 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 66 

Lay Monastery, The, 19 

Leasowes, The, 134, 135, 139 m, 154. 
See Shenstone 

Lely, Sir Peter, 37, 61, 84 

Le Notre, 122, 124, 164 

Leonora, 203 

Lerpiniére, de, 79 

Leslie, C. R., Life of Constable, 16 n., 
43, 70 n. 

Liber Veritatis. See Lorrarn, CLAUDE 

Ligne, Prince de, 165 

Lisle, Thomas, 132 n. 

Lloyd, Robert, 28 

London and Wise, 125, 126 

London Journal, 24 n. 

London Magazine, 32, 192 

LorRAIN, CLAUDE, iii, iv, v, et passim: 
esp. 36-44; Liber Veritatis, 63, 68, 
81, 94, 158, 215; association of 
C. L. with gardening, 40, 131, 132, 
137, 139, 140, 142, 146, 147, 148, 
I5I, 153, 155, 157, 158, 159, 160, 
162, 165, 179, I81, 209; influence 
on painting, iv, 8, 9, 42, 72-76; 
C. Le ’and: Milton; 38,-2477 CL. 
and Thomson, iii, 22, 94, 107; “ Na- 
ture and Claude,” 40, 43, 157, 159; 
C. L. and the picturesque, 171, 172, 
175, 177, 180, I8I, 192, 196, 199; 
etching, 78; prints from, 79, 80-83, 
84, 85, 86; Claudian landscape, 95. 
See Amphitheatre, Meandering 
stream, Ruins (classic), Sunrises 
and sunsets, Temples, Tivoli 

LorrAIN and Rosa associated, 54-56, 
I15, 116, 117, 146, 172, 175, 176, 
177, 180, 190, 194, 213, 217, 228, 
229, 231. See Sublime and beauti- 
ful 

Loten, John, 7 

Loutherbourg, Philip de, 70, 72, 73, 
196 

Lowry, Wilson, 83 

Lubbock, Percy, Earlham, 89 

Lyttelton, Lord (George), 112, 135, 
137, 161, 172, 174 


INDEX 


M 


Mackenzie, Henry, 208 

Major, Thomas, 82 

Mallet, David, 108 

Manby, Thomas, 7 

Manley, Mrs., 201 

Maratti, Carlo, 54, 65 

Marie Antoinette, 165 

Marriott, Thomas, 156 n. 

Marshall, William, 157, 160 

Mason, George, 140 n., 146, 161, 162, 
168 

Mason, James, 82, 204 

Mason, William, 16, 46, 150-153, 154, 
155, 161, 183, 184, 192 

Mathias, T. J., 161 

Mead, Dr., 62, 63, 84, 227 

Meandering stream (or 
stream), 75, 95, 97, 99, 
108, III, I14, 118, FFG, 
174, 180, 182, 189, 202, 
219, 220, 222, 229 

Melissa and Marcia, 220 

Men and Women, 224 

Michelangelo, 16, 21, 29, 30, 32, 33; 
206 

Middleton, Charles, 138 n. 

Miller (Lady), Anna Riggs, 60 

Miller, Hugh, England and the Eng- 
lish, 135 

Miller, James, 27 n. 

Miller, John Sebastian, 83 

Miller, Sanderson, 136-138 

Milton, John, 4, 38, 72, 109, 113, 146, 
147, 164, 174 

Montagu, Lady Mary, 169 

Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 92, 141, 172, 
173, 174, 195, 219 

Montesquieu, 65, 163 

Monthly Review, 32, 148, 161, 185, 
193, 194 

Moore, John, 32, 218 n., 219 

Moral in gardening, 136, 137, 149, 150, 
162, 222. See Landscape gardening 

Moral in landscape, 99, 100, 109, 171, 
176;. 187,257 

Mount Pleasant, 22 n. 

More, Hannah, 89, 141, 195, 224 

More, J., Strictures on Thomson's 
Seasons, 107 n. 

Morgan, Lady, 33 n., 45, 52, 53, 63. 


winding 
I05, 1006, 


139, 154, 
203, 205, 


INDEX 


Morris, Mr., 140, 161 

Mortimer, John, 71, 72 

Moucheron, Isaac, 79 

Mountains, 4, 4,)5, 6; 7; 1%, 12, 14, 
96, IOI, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, I12, 
Miaye 14, 115; 124, 160, 271, 175, 
182, 183, I9I, 193, 194, 199, 201, 
205, 207, 214, 215 

Mundy, H. C., 156 n. 

Murphy, Arthur, 219 

Murphy, John, 82 


N 


Needler, Henry, 20 

New Ladies Magazine, 23 n. 

Newstead Abbey, 181 

Newton, James, 83 

Nieulant, William van, 79 

Nivernois, Duc de, 165 

Nollekens’, the, 35, 84 

Norbury Park, 75, 76 

North, Roger, Autobiography, 84 

Northall, John, 33, 60 

Northcote, James, 36, 37, 45, 52 

Nourse, John, 21 

Novel of the 18th Century, The Land- 
scape Arts and the Picturesque in, 
201-226 

Nuneham, 142 


O 


Ogilvie, John, 132 n., 156 n. 

Opening of the 18th Century, English 
Interest in Landscape at the, 3-13 

Ossian, 176, 177, 188, 214 


2c 


Pain’s Hill, 140, 155, 210 

Painters of Landscape. 
scape painters 

Painting and poetry related, iii, iv, 
ao, 52122, 23,26 

Painting, history, 17, 23, 24, 41 

Painting, landscape. See Landscape 
painting 

Patel, Pierre, 68 

Peacock, Thomas Love, 
230 

Peak, James, 83 

Pennant, Thomas, 184, 195 

Perelle, Gabriel, 77, 79, 85, 86 


See Land- 


LY TES 


Persfield, 140, 155, 179 

Pictorial Arts, The Regard for the, in 
18th Century England, 14-34 

Pictoribus atque poetis, 19, 23 

Picture collecting by the British, 7, 14, 
I5, 17, 25, 20, 28-30, 32, 33, 47, 
61-68 

Picture dealers, 32, 33, 62, 64 

Picture galleries: abroad, 10, 26, 31, 
32, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65, 105; at 
home, 62; 63;.67, 70 

Picture sales, 28, 30, 63, 64 

Pictures, dark, taste for, 16, 29, 30, 
32, 51 

Pictures, forged or copied, 29, 32, 33, 
47, 61, 66, 67 

“ Picturesque”: history of word, 17, 
137, 167, 168, 185; use, 54, 118, 
134, 137, 147, 148, 155, 178, 180, 
500,100, 200,, 205, 207. sat, (2145 
222, 230°. 

Picturesque, the, 4, 113-115, 178; p. 
school, 199, 222, 223; see Gilpin, 
William, Price, Sir Uvedale, and 
Knight, Richard Payne; Gilpin and 
the p., 183-189; S. R. and the p., 
see Rosa, SALVATOR; gardening and 
the p., 156-162; theory of the p., 
198, 199; p. and romantic, 23, 185, 
186, 199. See Devonshire, High- 
lands, Lakes, Wales 

Picturesque, The Cult of the, 167- 
200 

Picturesque in the Novel of the r8th 
Century, The Landscape Arts and 
the, 201-226 

Piles, Count de, 40, 206 

Pilkington’s Dictionary, 27 

Piozzi; Mrs.."227 43, 54 

Pitt, William, 135, 137, 138, 140, 161, 
172 

Poetical Recreations, 90 n. 

Poetry, English, of the 18th Century, 
Italian Landscape in, 95-120 

Polite Companion, 50 n. 

Pond, Arthur, 63, 66, 79, 82 

Pope, Alexander, 27 n., 97; painting, 
QI, 92; picturesque, 167; gardening, 
£25, 326; 127,.328,, 135 02, 210 

Portland, Duchess of, 63, 184 

Potter, Robert, 131 

Poussin, Gaspar, v, 10, 16 n., 21, 41, 


240 


42, 59, 63, 69, 70, 72, 73, 79, 82, 
83, OI, 92, 93, 131, 148, 155, 162, 
179, 204, 224 

Poussin, Nicolas, v, 9, 22, 30, 54, 59, 
67, 82, 106, 107, I15, 118, 132, 136, 
I5I, 153, 170, 175, 176, 177, 180, 
181, 193, 194, 199, 206, 231 

Poussins, the, 21, 35, 71, 79 

Powys, Mrs. Philip, Diary, 62, 66 

Pranker, R., 82 

Prater, The, 94 

Pratt, Samuel, 184 

Precipices, 3, 5, 6, 10, 11, 18, 103, 106, 
108, I14, 122, 124, I50, 170, I9QI, 
198, 206, 214, 216, 218, 219, 224, 
225 

Price, (Sir) Uvedale, 40, 51, 55, 56, 
140, 155, 156, 158-159, 188, 200, 
224 

Print, influence of the, 76-86, 227, 
228; amateur artist and the p., 86, 
87; p. collecting, 18, 77, 83-86; 
praise of p., 105; prints of C. L., 
79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 86; of S. R., 79, 
80, 81, 82. See Engraving, British 
School of Landscape 

Prior, Matthew, 18, 125 

Prior Park, 204 

Prompter, The, 24 

Prospect,” 5, 9, 10, IT, 12, 17, 20, 
55, 95, 96, 97, 99, 102, 103, 106, 
TOO, 13%, -202,7 122, 124207330577, 
139, 169, I9I, 195, 199, 202, 203, 
204, 208, 211, 212, 217; Landscape 
and prospect, 95-96, 180 

Pye, Henry James, 154 

Pyne, W. H., 18 nm. 94 


R 


Radcliffe, Mrs., 95, 196, 211, 212-217, 
218 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, Romance, iv 

Raphael, v, 10, 16, I9, 21, 22, 30, 33, 
38, 86, 92, 152 

Rapin, On Gardens, 123 

Ravenet, Simon Frangois, 82 

Rembrandt, 67, 78, 84 

Reni, Guido, 17, 22, 30, 32, 34, 90, II5, 
206 

Repton, Humphry, 93, 155, 156, 157, 
159-161, 166, 222, 224 


INDEX 


Restoration, the, 121 

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 16, 18, 24, 41, 
49, 62, 66, 85 

Reynolds, Myra, The Treatment of 
Nature in English Poetry, iv 

Richardson, Jonathan, 18, 19, 25, 38, 
58, 59, 77, 98 

Richardson, Samuel, 66, 203, 204 

Richmond Hill, 118, 142 

Rise and Progress of the Present Taste 
in Gardening, The, 145, 146 

Roberts, William, Memoirs of Hannah 
More, 141 n. 

Robinson, “ Perdita,” 218 

Roche Abbey, 188 

Rogers, Samuel, 36 n., 117 

“Romantic,” 10, 17, 23, 110, 113, I15, 
122, 134, 137, 145, 169, 170, 174, 
175, 176, 178, 179, 181, 186, 190, 
193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 202, 
205, 206, 207, 213, 215, 216, 27, 
230 n. See Rosa, SALVATOR 

Romanticism, iv, 227 

Romanticism, Italian Landscape and, 
227-232 

Romilly, Sir Samuel, 63, 86 

Rosa, SALVATOR, iii, iv, v, ef passim; 
Personality, 44-50; S. R. and the 
picturesque, iv, 6, 7, 50, 51, 52, 54, 
55, 169, 170, 172, 174, 175, 176, 177, 
180, 181, 187, 193, 194, 196, 200 n., 
206, 211, 216, 226; influence on 
painters, 6, 7, 8, 69, 70, 71, 72, 90, 
QI; on gardening, 128, 131, 146, 153, 
157, 160, 165; S. R. and Mil- 
ton, 47, 174; S. R. and Shake- 
speare, 46, 152; S. R. and Thom- 
son, 23, 107, 196; “‘savage,” 46, 40, 
51, 59, 107, 116, 117, 152; “ dash,” 
47, 48, 107, 115, 117, 193; horror, 
49, 53, 55; sublimity, 50, 51, 54, 
56; “romantic,” 50, 51, 193, 194, 
196, 216; banditti, 45, 48, 52, 53, 
71, I19, 157, 160, 187; dark tone, 
51; trees, 50, 51, 52, 60, 103, 105, 
106, II4, I16, 120, 131, 157, 160, 
223, 228, 229; prints from S. R., 
79, 80, 81-82. See Lorrain and 
Rosa; Salvatorial landscape, 95; see 
Precipices, Horrid 

Rousham, 128 

Rousseau, Jacques (painter), 8 


INDEX 241 


Rousseau, Jean Jacques, iv, v, 163, 
164, 227 

Rowe, Mrs., 87, 90, 202 

Royal Magazine, 134 n. 

Rubens, v. 22, 38, 67, 116, 157 

Ruins, 9, 14, 15, 92, 99, 101, 112, 114, 
118, 136-138, 155, 162, 163, 171, 
173, 180, 182, 187, 188, 190, I9g1, 
Mreeeos walt, 2£2 N., 215, 225; 
classic, 9, 96, 97, 100, 113, 118, 
127, 137, 158, 179, 188, 230; Gothic, 
a24,.136-.537,:212 n. 

Ruins, artificial, 127, 136-138, 147, 
149, 153, 158 n., 162, 170, 180, I9gI, 
192, 208, 210, 221 

Ruskin, John, 49, 226, 231 

Russell, John, 31-32, 59 

Rutter, Frank, Richard Wilson, 74 

Ruysdael, v, 146, 158, 196 


Ss 


Sadeler, 77, 79, 136 
Salmon, William, 14-15 
Salvator. See Rosa, SALVATOR 
Sandrart, 36 

Santayana, George, Sense of Beauty, 
24 Nn. 

Savage, Richard, 98, ror, 133 

Scene painting, 70, 108 

Scots Magazine, 150 

Scott, John, 4, 116, 153, 189, 190, 
228 

Scott, Sarah, 219 

Scott, Sir Walter, C. L., 9, 229; S. R., 
213 n., 225; Claude glass, 186; 
painting, 93; gardening, 163 

Serle, J., 128 n. 

Serpentine, 118, 131, 133, 138, 143, 
148, 161, 219. See Meandering 
river 

Seward, Anna, 48, 76, 114, 117, 161, 
177 

Shaftesbury, Earl of: connoisseurship, 
19, 25, 58; painting, 17; C. L., 37; 
S. R., 44-45, 46-48; gardening, 
122-123, 127 n. 

Sharp, William, 82 

Shaw, Stebbing, 195 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 54 

Shenstone Green, 220 

Shenstone, William, 95, 


136, 136, 


139 N., 171, 208; prints, 85; paint- 
ing, 92; gardening, 135, 136, 138, 
148, 152, 159, 161, 208 

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 219 

Sherlock, Martin, 22 

Sister Arts, the. See Painting and 
poetry 

Sketch of the Landscape, A, 156 

Skrine, Henry, 195 

Smart, Christopher, 115 

Smith, Charlotte, 211, 212 

Smith, George, 22, 73, 81, 83, 91, 116, 
179, 193 

Smith, John (of Chichester), 73 

Smith, John Thomas, 76 n., 84, 155 n. 

Smith, Sir James Edward, 33 n., 46, 
60, 196 

Smith, Sydney, 186 n. 

Smollett, Tobias, 53, 54, 93, 
205 

Sotheby, William, 115, 230, 231 

Southcote, Philip, 134, 141, 144, 152, 
161 

Spectator, The, 16, 17, 124, 125, 126; 
advertisements, 17, 64, 84 

Spence, Joseph, 149 n.; Anecdotes, 
1273021125 0, 207) 22: 

Spendthrift, The, 28 

Spenser, Edmund, 83, 111 

Stage scenery, 75, 108 

Starke, Mariana, 60 

Stedman, John, 21 

Steele, Richard, 24, 64, 167, 201 

Sterne, Lawrence, 92, 206 

Stevenson, Thomas, 8 

Stockdale, Percival, 54 

Stourhead, 62, 140, 147, 155, 209 

Stowe, 62, 130, 132, 135, 136, 140, 
153, 170, 204, 210 

Straaten, Henry van, 8 

Strange, Sir Robert, 50, 82, 86 

Strutt, Joseph, 8, 52, 69, 77, 78, 80, 
83 

Studley, 155, 173, 180, 188 

Sublime and beautiful, 51, 54, 111, 
112; 127, TA6565-76, 437.751 70,0 00, 
215, 217. See Burke, Edmund; 
LorraINn and Rosa 

Sunrises and sunsets, 14, 73, 76, 99, 
102, 103, 108, °108, 112, 123,390, 
192, 196, 206, 231,..233,:215,. 270, 
217, 218, 219, 225, 230, 231 


178, 


242 


Swanevelt, Hermann, 8, 35, 68, 71, 
78, 81, 84 
Switzer, Stephen, 126 


T 


Talbot, Miss, 85, 87 

Taste, 18,: 255) 27; 28; 108; 111, fat, 
145, 161; history of term, 18, 27, 
28; man .of taste, 24,25; 27, 25, 
See Thomson 

Taverner, Mr., 93 

Temple, Sir William, 122, 145, 152 

Temples, I00, 102, 118, 131, 132, 133, 
134, 136, 140, 142, 147, 149, 154, 
15S; 178, 150, 207, 204, -250.,.220, 
229, 231. See Tivoli 

Terni, 74, 169, 178, 190, 231 

Teverone, 10 

Theobald, Lewis, 19 

Thomas, Mrs., 110 

Thompson, A. Hamilton, in Cam- 
bridge Mod. Hist. of Eng. Lit., iv 

Thomson, James, 3, 84, 96, 98; 101- 
108; influence on taste, 94, 107, 
$08,119, 218, 234, 5274.02 70,0402, 
195, 196, 211; T. and painting, iv, 
A, 107 CALA Sis toes oe ea 
107 

Thrales, the, 191. See Piozzi, Mrs. 

Tickell, Thomas, 96, 97 

Tinker, Chauncey B., vii, 190 n.; 
Letters of James Boswell, 156 n. 

Tipping, H. Avery, English Homes, 
130 n. 

Titian, v, 16, 21, 23, 24, 30, 32, 33; 
65, 107, 120, 157, 159, 193 

Tivoli, 10, 83, 86, 144, 151, 160, 1096, 
206, 209, 229. See also 134, 136, 
138 

Topiary work, 6, 122, 125, 219 

Topographical draughtsmen, 74, 77 

Town and Country Magazine, 138 n. 

Travel, difficulties of, 6-7 

Travelers. See Italy, British travelers 
in 

Trees: clipped, see Topiary work; 
Salvatorial, see Rosa, SALVATOR 

Trusler, John, 162 

Turner, J. M. W., 42, 43, 74, 81 

Twining, Thomas, iii 

Tyers, Mr., 150 

Tyson, Michael, 184 


INDEX 


U 


Udine, Giovanni da, Io 
Ugbrooke Park, 156 and n. 
Universal Magazine, 71 n., 171 m. 
Universal Spectator, 27 

Ut pictura poesis, 16, 19, 22, 26 


V 


Vernet, Claude Joseph, 34, 39, 69, 70, 
74, 81, 83, 95, 179, 181 

Veronese, 21, 30 

Verses Written in London on the Ap- 
proach of Spring, 115, 116 

Veryard, E., 9 

Virtuoso, 24, 25, 26, 29, 61, 126 

Vistos, 6, 103, 122, 127 n., 202, 221 

Vivares, Francis, 80, 82, 86, 182 

Volpato, J., 79 


W 


Waagen, Dr., Treasures of Art in 
Great Britain, 63 

Wales, 98, 101, 115, 170, 173, 174, 
190, IOI, 197, 207, 224 

Walpole, Horace, 7, 8, 27, 65, 73, 79, 
93, 227; C. Ln: 38, 725°. Baa, 
7I, gO; gardening, 125, 120, 130, 
131, 132, 133, 135, 140, f4iy 1q3, 
144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 154, 
163, 165; the picturesque, 170, 184, 
188 

Walpoole, George Augustus, 195 

Wanderer of the Alps, The, 219 

Ward, S., 153 

Warton, Joseph, 29, 107 n., 108, 113, 
I14, 128, 154, 178 

Warton, Thomas (elder), 97 

Warton, Thomas (younger), 113;°125, 


154 
Watelet, Claude Henri, 79, 163 
Water-Colour School, British, 74, 75 
Waterlo, Anthonie, 78, 84 
Water-works in gardens, 6, 9, 122, 123 
Watkins, Thomas, 196 
Watts, Alaric, 231 
Weekly Miscellany, 48 
Weekly Oracle, 32 
West, Benjamin, 23, 33, 66 
West, Gilbert, 111 
West, Jane, 220, 221 
West, Thomas, 194 


INDEX 243 


Westminster Magazine, 131, 141 

Whaley, John, 110 

Whately, Thomas, 146, 147, 164, 165, 
183 

Whitehead, William, 28, 109, 142 

Whitley, William, Thomas Gainsbor- 
Ouek, 33-0. 41 0, 71 N. 

Wilkes, John, 84; gardening, 
picturesque, 178, 190 

Williams, Helen Maria, 218 

Williams, W., 116 

Wilson, Richard, 43, 73, 74, 81, 83, 89 

Wilton, 62, 122, 165 

Winstanley, Hamlet, 81 

Wooburn Farm, 134, 139 

Wood, John, 80 

Woodhouse, James, 75, 139 n. 

Woollett, William, 80, 81, 82, 83, 154 

Wootton, John, 63, 72, 73, 83 

Wordsworth, William, 76 n., 


155; 


100; 


S. R., 120; gardening, 163; pictur- 
esque, 197; Tivoli, 229 

World, The, 28, 142 

Wright, E., 25, 59, 64, 169 

Wright, Joseph, 72 

Wye, 183, 184 

Wyndham, Mrs., Chronicles of the 
18th Century, 55 n., 136 n. 


y, 


Young, Arthur, 38, 39, 50, 51, 66, 60, 
OI, 92, 96, 150, 155, 165, 168, 178- 
181 

Young, Edward, 109 


Z 


Zuccarelli, Francesco, 34, 69, 81, 83, 
QI, 95, 180 











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